How could I resist an invitation to a conference on "unmentionable topics"? Oh, not sex. What is there about sex that one can't mention in these liberated days, except maybe that it's not a suitable amusement for children?
What the people at the libertarian Rothbard-Rockwell Review had in mind for their fifth editors' conference, held in San Mateo last week, was more subversive stuff, like race and religion, crime and immigration. Of course these topics are mentioned all the time, to the point of tedium. But the rhetorical flourishes are a clue that these people take their ideas very seriously, not necessarily themselves. The chronically offended are being warned to stay away.
"This is the real Right," the announcement bragged, "determined — like the late Murray Rothbard — to rouse the American masses against Washington, D.C., and its allies in the media and Wall Street."
Llewellyn Rockwell, the second R in the title, took on religion.
"I would like to talk," he began, "about why the Christian right, from a Christian standpoint, is as much a pain in the neck as the Christian left."
His thesis, and despite all the quotable sound bites, it's a serious one that deserves thoughtful consideration, is that the religious right shouldn't adopt the left's agenda of religion as public policy.
"When people like Ralph Reed or other professional activists compare themselves to abolitionists or civil rights protesters, they think they are confounding their critics," Rockwell said. "In fact they're only introducing the core assumption of the social gospel into the faith, and thereby corrupting it. That assumption is that for Christians, the affairs of the City of Man should be of equal or greater importance than the affairs of the City of God."
The decline in membership of many mainline Christian denominations, at the same time as charismatic and evangelical churches have been growing, is reasonable evidence that Rockwell may be on to something.
"The entry of Christians into the public square may have been good for the country," he said "but I'm not sure it has been good for Christianity."
A recent issue of the magazine American Enterprise contained interviews with some 60 conservative religious leaders, he noted. "Every one had provocative statements to make about public policy, or the charitable mission they were undertaking to make up for the failures of the welfare state. What was strangely underplayed or entirely missing was any mention of faith, the topics of salvation grace and sin. Nor was there any mention of the disastrous state of the church today, theologically, liturgically or musically."
Could it be that concern for the state of one's immortal soul is too old-fashioned for the modern church? To be courted by the media elite one must be more public-spirited than that.
"The Catholic bishops held a full-blown press conference" recently, Rockwell said, "to denounce any cuts in welfare. The press took down every word, and The New York Times ran a prominent article explaining why God opposes a balanced budget."
Probably Rockwell wouldn't mind so much if the policies so adopted weren't so alien to his own. The opposition to cutting off welfare, as he said, originally came from the political left. But it has been joined by the prolife movement, which believes that any policy that might lead to more abortions is evil, and must therefore be opposed at any cost.
"With that," he said, "it became clear that the establishment within the prolife movement had joined the forces of socialism.
"Suppose it were proposed that the federal government pay $100,000 for every birth as an anti-abortion measure. Would prolifers support that too?"
Religion wasn't the only topic whose conventional pieties suffered a few knocks at the conference. Thomas Fleming of the magazine Chronicles talked about justice and revenge, and why vigilantism — from Neighborhood Watch to more activist forms — may be the appropriate response when government has lost the monopoly it claims on the use of force.
Michael Levin talked about race, the subject of a book he's working on. Levin is a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, whose administrators tried to keep him from teaching his classes because they disapproved of the views he expressed outside of class (while ignoring the far more egregious conduct of Leonard Jeffries).
During the question-and-answer period someone asked about the unwillingness of blacks on juries to convict members of their own race, and Levin took a swing at that one.
Blacks should be kept off juries in interracial cases, Levin said, and someone from the audience muttered, "They don't call it 'unmentionable' for nothing."
I don't agree with Levin's suggestion, and in fact I'm not sure how seriously he intended his impromptu comment. There are obvious constitutional and practical problems with implementing it and nobody is likely to try. But it shouldn't be outside the limits of permitted discussion. The examination of all conceivable alternatives, including the impossible ones, illuminates difficult issues.
So much public debate is stifled because people are afraid to say what they think. It was thoroughly enjoyable to spend the day listening to people who weren't afraid.