The Overton Salon

In yesterday’s post I contrasted a politics of the cross with typical politics. A common argument against faith in politics (normally aimed at what the person thinks of as “fundamentalist” Christians or Muslims) is that you just can’t impose your beliefs on people. Normally, this comes in two forms: religious beliefs are not things that all people hold, and so the by the mere fact they are religous we can’t accept them; or they are not realistic. I think my last post would probably be accused of both. In part I of this post, I’ll deal with the first question.

Bill O’Reilly recently brought up the first objection, in a comment on Obama’s vision of what he calls the “nanny state.” He said:

He believes that the government is there to impose — that’s a very important word — social justice. Not to persuade, to impose, to make laws that say we’re going to take money from the wealthy and give it to those who don’t have a lot of money.

I could of course mention here that Obama was elected by a majority, so it’s hardly an imposition when he tries to do something he campaigned on. But the larger point about “imposition” stands: O’Reilly doesn’t want to be forced to give his money away (although he may be charitable himself – as many conservatives are), but to be free to do with it what he wants.

I remember similar arguments by progressives during the 2004 campaign when Kerry was pushed about his religious beliefs and abortion. Religion should not be pushed on any one, and beliefs about religion not held by most people should be off-limits. You can’t impose your Christian beliefs on other people, just as conservatives think the government cannot impose equality on our country.

But this argument has two problems:

First, it falls into what philosophers call the genetic fallacy. This is when you say that because it’s origin was bad, the idea is bad. In this case, because you disagree with the origin of an idea like being anti-abortion (that it comes from a religion in which you do not believe) the idea is bad. That is not why the idea is bad – it may or may not be bad on other grounds.

Second, people who argue this way fundamentally misunderstand what a “belief” is. Simply stated, in the public realm a belief is an argument for the way things ought to be. Everyone has these, and no matter the source of the beliefs, they must be argued for. The arguments may or may not be convincing, depending on the reasons, but they are just that – arguments.

Beliefs are never simply “imposed”, but argued for, and implemented depending on the office of the person arguing. Given our system of government, O’Reilly is just wrong to say that Obama is imposing this on us. He was elected and given the authority to follow his beliefs of how things should be. We may argue with his beliefs, but there is no “imposition” here.

Likewise, when Christians argue for a vision of the way things ought to be, we should not worry that we’re “imposing” anything on anyone. We argue that reality should be seen this way, and if we are maintaining our integrity, we are also listening to them (a topic for another post), opening ourselves to criticism.

But an argument is an argument, whatever it’s source.