Interesting issues, disappointing book. In a series of three
lectures Carter (Law/Yale) "meditates" on the challenge religious
belief poses for political authority in American society. By
reinterpreting the Declaration of Independence he first suggests
that justice be measured in terms of government's response to
dissenters. He then argues that the federal government's response
to those who take religion seriously has been to cast them more as
potential traitors whose religious faith implies a challenge to
sovereignty rather than legitimate dissenters whose views deserve
accommodation. For Carter a "liberal constitutionalism" has
dominated American society, imposing an image of secular uniformity
in the name of atomistic individual rights. By rushing to
"celebrate our own open-mindedness" when embracing a seemingly
neutral areligious polity, however, we overlook "the way . . . a
strongly secular bias can be . . . stultifying to people whose
religious faith is at the center of their lives." Against the
widely-accepted "single-national-community ethos" that requires
legal uniformity Carter envisions a system of community autonomy in
which "believing families" shape their lives around a shared faith;
the goal is to allow religious believers the same political freedom
to act on their beliefs as those who embrace a secular society.
Unfortunately, even in local community government in accord with
any set of beliefs, religious or secular, unavoidably involves
leaving some people outside the favored order whenever society is
not perfectly homogeneous. This would seem to be an obvious problem
for Carter to address when considering practical issues, but he
rushes to play the role of detached scholar in the presence of real
policy questions. His apparent support for state aid to religious
schools, for example, is quickly qualified by claiming that "I am
by no means advocating" such aid, but merely arguing for its
constitutionality. When addressing powerful topics, wishy-washy
meditations are just not very satisfying. (Kirkus Reviews)
Between loyalty and disobedience; between recognition of the law's
authority and realization that the law is not always right: In
America, this conflict is historic, with results as glorious as the
mass protests of the civil rights movement and as inglorious as the
armed violence of the militia movement. In an impassioned defense
of dissent, Stephen L. Carter argues for the dialogue that
negotiates this conflict and keeps democracy alive. His book
portrays an America dying from a refusal to engage in such a
dialogue, a polity where everybody speaks, but nobody listens.
"The Dissent of the Governed" is an eloquent diagnosis of what
ails the American body politic--the unwillingness of people in
power to hear disagreement unless forced to--and a prescription for
a new process of response. Carter examines the divided American
political character on dissent, with special reference to religion,
identifying it in unexpected places, with an eye toward amending it
before it destroys our democracy.
At the heart of this work is a rereading of the Declaration of
Independence that puts dissent, not consent, at the center of the
question of the legitimacy of democratic government. Carter warns
that our liberal constitutional ethos--the tendency to assume that
the nation must everywhere be morally the same--pressures citizens
to be other than themselves when being themselves would lead to
disobedience. This tendency, he argues, is particularly hard on
religious citizens, whose notion of community may be quite
different from that of the sovereign majority of citizens. His book
makes a powerful case for the autonomy of communities--especially
but not exclusively religious--into whichdemocratic citizens
organize themselves as a condition for dissent, dialogue, and
independence. With reference to a number of cases, Carter shows how
disobedience is sometimes necessary to the heartbeat of our
democracy--and how the distinction between challenging accepted
norms and challenging the sovereign itself, a distinction crucial
to the Declaration of Independence, must be kept alive if Americans
are to progress and prosper as a nation.
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