Democracy and Tradition

I've been looking forward to sitting down with Jeffery Stout's Democracy and Tradition for some time. Last year I read a few chapters, part two, where he encourages reasoned religious arguments in the public square and the proceeds to make his mentors look foolish - Stanley Hauerwas and Alistair MacIntyre. From what I remember about Stout's approach to H and M, I was quite affected. I felt like I'd been witness to a slaughter, and I had no idea how to judge if the slaughter was at all accurate or needed or just.

Stout claims that Traditionalists (under which he groups Milbank, H and M, and Burke) and Secularists (Rorty and Rawls among others) have entered into culture wars (he claims they created them)with such polarized Manichean rhetoric that no common ground could be hoped for. To Ts, Democracy is the great source of atomizing evil which erodes communities, and consequently, the virtues. It allows for the rise of capitalism and the laxity of the middle class. For Ss, Democracy is our only salvation, this is, of course, if we can keep dogma and religious reasoning out of the public square. Stout rightly corrects Ss by asserting that Rorty's position on truth is unsustainable for a democracy, that if a state is to be virtuous it must have a concept of truth (14). But Stout also thinks that Augustinians (a subgroup of Ts) are wrong to assume that a general public should adopt a common orientation toward the good. Nonetheless he claims that Democracy does this, and he applauds this, claiming that we mustn't abandon a sense of our collectivity (as imagined as it may be).

His other claim is that Ts overemphasize the pessimistic situation America is in. In my experience it has not been the Ts who are the harbingers of American sins, but rather the Marxists, and the democrats - I'm thinking of the radical end here - Michael Moore and Chomsky (is he a democrat? Perhaps libertarian is better here).

But who does Stout respond to these Ts and Ss with?: Whitman (yes Walt), Emerson and Dewey. Talk about erectile dysfunction! I mean I tend to agree with Stout's negative apologetic, but his positive argument and his resources are severely lacking. It seems like he is attempting to create an American Democratic company of Saints that will rival that of Christendom. I guess Augustine is a bit much to live up to. Both Emerson and Whitman are twits and Dewey, well I just don't know him well enough to aptly assault him. I think that Stout might have fared better with Raymond Williams, the founder of Rode Island, or perhaps Jimmy Carter, maybe even a little Martin Luther King Jr. The problem is that Stout is searching for sufficiently secular origins for what is properly considered a Baptist tradition - Democracy (though he says he isn't searching for such origins - 11, 13).

Yes Stout. Democracy - a Baptist Tradition (I'll give Wesley a little credit too.) I know I'm being a bit antagonistic here, but I think there is a case to be made that the Free Church tradition created the America we know and l...ike (sometimes). Consider the role of the great awakenings in creating a broad sense of communal identity - creating the public square even. Tents were to American what Coffee houses and pubs were to 18th century Brits, and Salons were to 19th century Frenchmen. I have no idea what the Germans where doing - climbing mountains maybe, reading Goethe, creating the suspenders? The Spanish were busy with Carnivals and the Italians were likely very busy reorganizing their many city states. But the Baptists - they were sensing the inward movement of the spirit and claiming freedom of conscience before such ideas were sanctified by the Constitution (thanks to the Whitefields and Wesleys out there).