Enlighten the Vote PAC

By Mathew Goldstein

Secularists have several civil rights groups with lawyers such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation and American Atheists. Secularists have a lobbying group, the Secular Coalition for America. Yet there is still only one elected official in the Congress who self-identifies as a non-theist. We need something more, but this something more that we need is not an atheist political party. We need a well funded PAC similar to EMILY's List.

There is such a PAC, it is called Enlighten the Vote, but unfortunately it appears that is not well funded. If the Enlighten the Vote PAC were better funded, secularists could pursue a three-pronged strategy to elect atheists: recruiting and funding viable atheist candidates; helping them build and run effective campaign organizations; and mobilizing secular voters to help elect progressive candidates across the nation. We could work within the context of existing progressive political parties, including the Democratic party, for the targeted and limited goal of secularist government, much like the Secular Coalition for America already does, but without the 501(c)4 restrictions on partisan political activities.

As a group, atheists don't have a common, broad, governing agenda needed for a political party. For example, I disagree with the National Atheist Party's support for import tariffs. My understanding is that most economists disfavor import tariffs because the available empirical evidence (and also economic theory) is that by restricting trade such tariffs result in a net loss in most contexts. I don't think atheists should be taking a position on import tariffs under the banner of atheism because economic policy is too far removed from the issues related to the existence of gods.

More generally, I think everyone should, insofar as it is currently possible, strive to anchor their policy positions in the available empirical evidence. One of the biggest problems I have with the Republican party is that their supporters tend to favor policies that directly contradict lots of available, strong evidence on issues such as global warming, evolution and sex and history education, and the like. Republicans like to say that the Obama Administration's stimulus program "failed" despite the fact that the empirical evidence, when evaluated by the experts, appears to better fit the conclusion that the stimulus program reduced the strength of the recession. It is difficult to trust any political party or movement that proudly exhibits a selective unwillingness to follow or respect or understand the overall weight of the evidence. Ideology overtaking reason isn't a recipe for good governing or national achievement and success.

What many secularists as a group have in common is an ethical civil rights agenda for secular government that opposes government favoring religious ideologies over more generally applicable principles and opposes government privileging religious institutions over non-religious institutions. Accordingly, the Enlighten the Vote PAC that seeks to elect self-identified atheists who favor ethical secular governing with equality before the law for all, and that could supplement the work of the non-partisan Congressional lobbying group Secular Coalition for America, appears to me to be worthy of our support (despite their odd practice of capitalizing the word atheist as if it were a proper noun).

The specifics of the agenda varies over time. Examples of current policy issues which the Secular Coalition for America lobbies Congress include discrimination against atheists in the military, laws allowing pharmacists to deny emergency contraception access, exemptions for so-called faith-healing from medical neglect liability, safety exemptions for religious child care centers, theological restrictions imposed on civil marriage, government support of organizations that deny membership to non-theists such as Boy Scouts, broad exemptions for religious groups from local zoning restrictions (RLUIPA), religious control over sex education, "Under God" in the Pledge, government funding of religious schools, taxpayer subsidized housing for clergy, and state school curricula that mislead children for religious reasons.

There are naysayers who advocate for fear on behalf of silence. They say that the religious right is big, and strong, and mean. The religious right wants us to challenge them so that they can target us for defeat. Therefore, anyone who publicly takes any unpopular position in opposition to the religious right is playing into the religious right's hands by provoking them. The best strategy is to be intimidated into silence.

It is logical, and therefore probably true, that some people want their political opponents to be afraid of them with the goal of intimidating their opponents into silence. Insofar as we appease a strategy of promoting intolerance and bigotry against atheists by agreeing to be intimidated into silence by our political opponents we are arguably guilty of encouraging such a strategy on their part. But this is not primarily about what our opponents want or about their tactics, this is not primarily about what is currently popular and unpopular, this is first and foremost about the merit of alternative government policies and trying to realize the better policies on the basis of merit. We identify and speak out on behalf of some policies and against other policies because those policies are better or worse than the alternatives, not because those policies are currently more popular or unpopular. We are all better off if our conversations on policies are open and held on the basis of the policy merit, not on the basis of insisting on a-priori self-censorship that is rationalized by someone's measure of relative size of, and reasons to fear, the opposition. Silence because of fear of the opposition isn't a policy argument with any substance, its a recipe for rewarding the promotion of intolerance as a political tactic. My advice to everyone is to avoid being self-deceived by anyone claiming it is a sophisticated and wise strategy to refuse to advocate for good policies merely because those policies currently face a misdirected, strong opposition.

I anticipate that some people may object to the focus on electing atheists. Why not focus on electing secularists more generally? Why not use the more inclusive term "non-theist"? We, all of us secularists, not just atheists, need to challenge the anti-atheist prejudice directly and head on because it is in the self-interest of secularism to defeat the fear of atheism. The fear of atheism and prejudice against atheists is one of the major obstacles to the popularity of secularism more generally. We can't defeat that association by trying to divorce secularism from atheism even though they are not the same because secularism necessarily tolerates atheism and therefore, for that reason alone, anti-atheist bigots will not accept secularism. EMILY's list is more effective, not less effective, by focusing on electing women rather than focusing on electing people of any gender who support abortion, because they recognize that opposition to legal abortions and under-representation of women as policymakers in government are mutually re-enforcing problems.

Political Pragmatism and Philosophical Pragmatism

Pragmatism usually refers to a practical way of dealing with life. It's a very down to earth way of deaing with problems in a sensible and realistic fashion. Pragmatic approaches are often contrasted with decisions and actions based on ideological, highly abstract or theoretical frameworks. This difference may over dichotomize things as discussed in my article on the Binary Thinking Habit, but popular accounts often use a simple notion of pragmatism in discussing decision making styles. Thus, to a mixture of praise and frustration, President Obama’s governing style is often labeled politically “pragmatic”. One example of this was his approach to health insurance reform. The HC reform approach evolved from the government-sponsored language he used in campaign speeches, to a hybrid compromise that could be passed by both Houses of Congress. He was also called pragmatic to attempt to compromise with Republicans in extending unemployment benefits and providing some relief to the middle class when he gave up on a key campaign promise to roll back Bush-era tax cuts for the “wealthy”.

This practical politics has lead some to ask what values Obama really has. His pragmatism makes various stances seem unprincipled, hard to define and predict. Is he focused on the economy, or terrorism on managing government? What won’t he compromise on?

According to University of Chicago political scientist William Howell, Obama often starts with some "clear policy views," for the longer term, but they may not be clear to casual public scrutiny because "they're conjoined with a recognition that presidential power is contested ... and he gets very pragmatic very quickly." Such political pragmatism is often described as one that recognizes here-and-now “realities”. But what are realities and how do they different from political positions?

Obama's Mideast speech was described by some as pragmatic since it recognized US limitations along with democratic yearnings evidenced by what has been called an Arab Spring. But the speech also repeated his position that Israel-Palestine peace negotiations must acknowledge the 1967 borders as a starting point 1967 borders. This is politically practical in the sense that Obama’s position represents a general consensus. Reflecting this he has already secured the political backing of the United Nations, European Union and Russia. But to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this policy is not grounded in reality as he sees it. He frames the issue differently, a process discussed in my blog on Towards Understanding Rationality and its Limits Regarding Complex Issues . Netanyahu would prefer to ground things on new “demographic facts on the ground”. The 67 border lines do not take into account what Netanyahu called "demographic changes that have taken place over the last 44 years," This includes an estimated 500,000 (illegal as discussed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement) Israeli settlers living on West Bank land. These settlements represent an occupation which the US and most others do not recognize and to many it represents a manufactured, force based outcome dictated by an occupation plan of a greater Israel.

One problem with trying to get practical results is opponents can see the possible path you can take and attempt to block it. Political pressure can be brought to accept "facts on the ground”. So are we pragmatic to deal with facts on the ground such as this or facts based on terrorist stances whether national or group? Such perceptual differences in reality are part of the challenges and dangers for what some call practical approaches and inquires into reality – political or otherwise.

Another is that problems and decisions may involve multiple issues and so one may need a coldly calculating meta-practical approach to decide how to tradeoff various positional strengths the reality of which is hard to know. In reality pragmatic approaches involve inquiry and analysis to understand what truthfully has worked, is working and will work. In pragmatic theory truth can neither be separated from the specific context of an inquiry, nor can it be divorced from the interests of the inquirer (Obama and Netanyahu for example). Understanding past analyses, the habits of the culture and persons involved are all part of a complicated analysis that makes something practical or not. For all these reasons it is easy to see why pragmatic policies are hard.

But are Obama’s approaches to things like health care, budget, and the creation of a 2 state solution really pragmatic? In a traditional, shallow sense they are part of a uniquely American political approach called political pragmatism. This philosophy was observed by Tocqueville during his American journeys which he described as a philosophy that says, 'if it works, we don't really care why.' As such it is a rejection of a purely /theoretical and ideological approach to solving political problems. To a European it was a new form of politics using means-tested facts and grounded reality. This still represents a recognizable American value and bears some relation to the broader, formalized pragmatic philosophy that originated in the US a bit later in the 19^th century by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. These are 2 philosophers that Americans should be proud of and know more about. Some of the background story for their story and the whole American pragmatism movement is covered Louis Menand’s enjoyable book: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. The book argues that the Civil War swept away the slave civilization of the South, but the brutality of an uncompromising ideological struggle also damaged the whole intellectual culture of the North. It took nearly half a century for Americans to develop a set of ideas, a way of thinking that would help them cope with the resulting conditions of “modern” life. That struggle, especially the philosophical struggle is elucidated by Menand’s book as he explains how the philosophy of pragmatism grows out of it.

But problems seem to have grown up about our understanding of what is pragmatic. Current political pragmatism is to the philosophy of pragmatism a bit like what Social Darwinism is to Darwin’s theory of evolution. It has some connection, but it is a loose application of some simple expressions of core ideas. without a validated theory and can lead in problematic directions. The family of ideas called pragmatism was concerned with broad theories of meaning, truth and reality and how a person comes to know. At its core is an emphasis on the practical consequences of a person or a group holding a belief. The question of what happens in the future is essential. Consequences are the behavioral and observational means we use to evaluate the truth of that belief. This simple focus on the practical helps evade many earlier metaphysical and epistemological problems discussed in Western philosophy. That’s good, since American don’t like endless debate on philosophical issues. So belief is something like an hypothesis. It is true if it brings about a satisfactory result in a particular inquiry or investigation. The truth of Darwin’s theory of evolution is measured by what it can be applied to and the results it secures. Obama’s push for a 2 state solution isn’t Newtonian Physics, but to a pragmatic philosophy it might be tried on to see how useful it is. Of course it is easier to test the validity of falling bodies than of establishing states and peacefully controlling borders. As I asked before, is a pragmatic approach practical for such types of issue? It’s complicated, but as we are all concerned with better outcomes it behooves us to understand the world in practical terms by their implications as well as the validated consistency of their predictions. As a philosophical stance Pragmatism helps clears away some of the philosophical underbrush, but the reality of the world and especially the social world represents real challenges for a practical philosophy. Which is a long, humbling way to say that what is called pragmatic politics may be better than a purely unvalidated, ideological approach; but is far from the approach to knowledge, truth and meaning that philosophical pragmatism espouses.