“This country is not a theocracy,” Dean said. “There are fundamental differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party believes that everybody in this room ought to be comfortable being an American Jew, not just an American; that there are no bars to heaven for anybody; that we are not a one-religion nation; and that no child or member of a football team ought to be able to cringe at the last line of a prayer before going onto the field.”
Does this strike anybody as being unclear? Well, it must be, because Volokh understood it to mean this:
Now I think I understand the message Dean is trying to convey. Many American Jews (the audience here was the United Jewish Communities’ general assembly) are uncomfortable with many traditionalist Christians’ expressed views that only Christians can go to heaven. I can understand why they are uncomfortable with those views: They worry that people who think non-Christians are going to Hell will act badly towards non-Christians in this world as well, not a certain connection but a plausible one. Dean wants to tell Jews, and others, that the Democratic Party welcomes non-Christians.
Come on, Gene. You’re goofing on us, right? You plucked that one word, heaven, out of context and just totally ignored everything else? Are the rumors that Volokh is hooking up with Ann Coulter true? Nah. Can’t be.
Now Eugene Volokh is a very smart guy with some very peculiar politics. But that doesn’t mean that he can’t read English. I mean, after all, the guy’s a lawprof. Well, even so, that doesn’t mean he can’t read English.
So because of my libertarian tilt and general tilt toward kindness to strangers (and it doesn’t get much stranger than this), I hereby appoint myself Eugene Volokh’s sign language interpreter on behalf of Howard Dean.
Here goes. Gene, Howard is not doing a compare and contrast between the beliefs of Jews and Christian. He’s talking about Democrats, regardless of what their religion may be. What he’s saying is that Democrats of any denomination should feel comfortable with their religious beliefs consistent with Democratic Party principles.
Think of “ich ben ein Berliner.” We are all Democrats. Get it?
If you read the rest of the quote, Howard gives it away when he says, “no child or member of a football team ought to be able to cringe at the last line of a prayer before going onto the field” You probably don’t go to a lot of sporting events, so I’ll help you out with the analogy. You see, somebody usually says a prayer of sorts before many of these sporting events, and they are generally very nice prayers, like “God loves our team better than their team, and so we will win this [select sporting event] because God wants us to.” Up to this point, it’s something with which every sports fan can readily agree.
But when the person saying the prayer is Christian, they sometimes tack on something at the end along the lines of, “in the name of our lord, Jesus Christ.” Uh oh. That’s where the cringing starts. Why go and spoil a perfectly good prayer by making it denominationally specific? We were all there together, feeling good, ready to kick butt in the name of the Lord, and then one phrase and all the Jews on the football team in the stands feel like you went and pulled the rug out from under them. Was this really necessary? It’s perfect for Church or at home, but at the stadium?
Howard is saying that it’s not necessary, in order to be a Democrat, to go that extra step to exclude anyone who doesn’t share the same faith. Howard is saying that people can have their religious beliefs without making them the cornerstone of their political beliefs. In fact, Howard is saying that the exclusionary religious beliefs have no place in the Democratic Party. You’re getting all this, right?
This is not a shot at Christians. It’s a way to include anyone who is not Christian. Sure, each of us would like it best from a religious point of view if the rest of you would just go without way of doing things, but then we would be Iran and Howard would be the Ayatollah. We’re not and he isn’t. Howard’s offering a Democratic Party that lets us all have our beliefs while not adopting any particular one to the exclusion of any other one.
Still, Gene asks:
So how then can Dean assure Jews, or anyone else, that “The Democratic Party believes … that there are no bars to heaven for anybody”?
Because, as Howard said in the beginning, America is not a theocracy. Whether one religious group believes that to be the case doesn’t matter. This is about politics, not religion, and the Democratic Party does not subscribe the idea that this is, at its base, a Christian nation. Was this really unclear to you?
Now you probably don’t like the Dems all that much, and that’s okay. But can we not try to mangle the meaning of everything, even something as innocuous as this, to try to start a religious war when the whole point is to open the doors of a political party to people regardless of their religious beliefs? I still think you were messing with our heads.
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I think that the main point Volokh was trying to make was that saying “The Democratic Party believes … that there are no bars to heaven for anybody” is not justified, because (1) there are democrats out there who do believe that there are bars to heaven for people who are not Christian (or some other religion), and (2) the Democratic Party has no stated belief either way about the heaven-worthiness of any religious group.
America is not a theocracy, but it does not follow from this that a political party must believe, as part of its platform, that there are no bars to heaven for anyone.
I read Howard Dean’s statements, and inferred the following. (1) Republicans believe that we should be a one-religion nation. (2) Democrats believe that we should not be a one-religion nation. (3) If you believe that there are bars to heaven based on religion, then you believe that we should be a one-religion nation.
(1) is questionable, but are obviously the stereotypes that a lot of people hold. (2) is probably true in all but extreme fringe cases. (3) just does not make sense at all, and I believe that’s what Volokh is pointing out.
There is a big difference between accepting all religions and accepting all religions as true. Howard Dean seems to be conflating the two, and Volokh seems to be pointing out the difference.
I read Volokh’s post. You fall into the trap he sought to build, parsing out one line and ignoring the context and substance. Why fixate on the “bars to heaven line and ignore everything else? Because that’s the way to recharacterize a statement with a strawman argument in order to knock it down. It’s a dishonest approach, and it appears that you bought into it.
This was the point of my post. Howard Dean isn’t giving the Democratic Party position on heaven and who gets to go there. He was talking about political inclusiveness regardless of religions. Again, you can’t pull one phrase out of the middle and then recharacterize the entire statement as if that one phrase in the middle was the point of it all. And I don’t for a second believe that someone as smart as Eugene Volokh didn’t know what he was doing, and wonder how many of his fans would blindly go along with him. I can hear him cackling in the background, saying “I can’t believe anybody bought this crap.”
Mind you, nowhere does Howard Dean speak of the Republicans. So if you infer that, it’s by your bias, not his. Sloppy thinking, very sloppy argument. The sort of nonsense that would only appeal to the choir.
I don’t think it’s fair to accuse people of having poor reading skills for interpreting a statement like “The Democratic Party believes … that there are no bars to heaven for anybody” as giving the Democratic Party a position on who does and doesn’t get to heaven. I understand that political inclusiveness regardless of religion was Dean’s goal, but the language of his speech goes beyond that with the “no bars to heaven” clause. I also understand that nothing in the rest of the speech is talking about going to heaven. But that one clause did. Here’s the English major in me: An author’s intent and the actual text are not always the same, and when they don’t match up, you can’t just write off what the text actually says.
Maybe Volokh should have just eased up and let it slide, maybe the statement wasn’t that big of a deal, or the main point of Dean’s argument, but I really don’t think that Volokh was maliciously misinterpreting the text. It might be because I reached a similar conclusion to Volokh’s on my own that I don’t think his interpretation was malicious. Maybe I’m just a poor reader and not smart enough, and Eugene Volokh really is trying to twist Dean’s words. But from where I sit, I think that he made a fair reading of the text. OK, this is a dead horse, I don’t think we’ve changed each others’ positions at all.
As for your last point, Dean does indeed speak of the Republicans. He says, “There are fundamental differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.” Then he proceeds with the list of what the Democratic Party believes. However, I agree that there is no grammatical connection between the two sentences. I made an inference that was unsupported by the language of his speech. He made a statement setting up an exclusive dichotomy, then proceeded to talk about one of the sides of the dichotomy – but didn’t explicitly say that the statements he was making were any of the differences mentioned in the dichotomy. Dean’s speech writers made a trap for me, and I fell right into it. Sloppy thinking and sloppy argument. I suppose I’ll have to get used to this sort of political circumlocution.
Thanks for the discussion. I do enjoy your blog very much. 🙂
Hey C, thanks from me as well. Please remember, I have occasionally been known to be a bit snarky in my approach. I didn’t really think Gene has reading issues (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but that he missed the forest through the trees on this one. I think he and that other snippy kid professor Kerr do a pretty good job, if you don’t mind their attitude.
I remember a logic question from one of those scholastic tests I took many years ago: If all that glitters is not gold then . . . (c) gold does not glitter. Literally correct, but entirely misses the point of the phrase. The lesson I took is that if you want to slam something, this is a great game to play. If you want to understand something, then appreciate its intended meaning without parsing it to death. There are plenty of things worthy of criticism. No need to manufacture them.
I love how you keep referring to him as “Gene”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his use that nickname. I love it!
I know! Eugene just sounds so . . . academic. I bet he’s reading this stuff and just dying to come over here and rip me a new one. Would it be beneath his dignity?
UPDATE-UPDATE-UPDATE-UPDATE!
I just found out why Gene hasn’t come by here to give me a piece of his mind. See the pic below of a VERY cheery Gene with Judge Koz somebody doing what conservatives do at the Federalist Society bash. Mark and I were not invited. (This photo also answers the dignity question).
What’s that the Fonz used to say?
Oh my God. That’s freakin’ awesome!