Let me leap to the defense of Damon Linker once again, partly out of appreciation for his link to our humble blog.
Linker, following Rawls, thinks that we can separate issues of “mere life” from those of “the good life.” That is, the liberal state can and should address issues of common security and welfare, while leaving for its citizens to determine for themselves their own particular conceptions of morality. “The Constitution merely establishes rules by which we might govern ourselves and resolve our disputes short of violent conflict, regardless of our views about God and the ultimate ends of humanity.”
Noah Millman complains that one can’t really draw a bright line between issues of “mere life” and those of “the good life,” between issues of the common good and issues of private morality. He offers the example of freedom of speech. When faced with allegedly harmful speech, like pornography or obscenity or hate-speech, the liberal has to decide between two options: either limit the speech (Millman calls this “illiberal,” and I agree), or allow it (the true “liberal” response). But he claims that the liberal’s reasons for allowing abusive speech make reference to “good life” and not “mere life” notions. He says, “To a liberal, you are a better person if you can tolerate being profoundly offended, and a worse person if you allege psychological injury and demand state protection from being subjected to profoundly offensive speech.”
This is, by my estimation, not at all an accurate description of why a liberal is committed to freedom of speech. My reason is perhaps best summed up by Justice John Marshall Harlan, ruling in favor of a man who wore a jacket on which he emblazoned “Fuck the Draft”: said Harlan, “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” That is, the state should allow pornography and obscenity and hate-speech because it is neutral regarding the value of those forms of speech. It allows individual citizens to choose for themselves whether they find such speech abhorrent or “lyrical.”
Millman thinks he is on firmer ground when it comes to universal public education. I readily admit that his argument is stronger here. I endorse his call for liberals to be more vocal in defending their substantive commitments (to science, etc.) rather than trying to procedurally disqualify opposing commitments (inevitably religious ones). Although I think liberals probably already do this.
Millman says, “A liberal should recognize that the state needs a really good reason to interfere in the family’s core mission by teaching things parents don’t want their kids to learn.” But the options when it comes to evolution vs. creationism (his chosen example) are not limited to “teaching the controversy” and teaching nothing at all. Isn’t it clear that we have already come up with a perfectly neutral and liberal compromise? It goes like this: Don’t like evolution? Then send your children to a private school. Heck, home-school them. Does this impose a burden on religious parents because of their religious views? Sure, a slight one, but I doubt anyone (Millman admits as much) can think of a better compromise.
The response to this, I suppose, would be something like this: Sure, it’s a good compromise, but even still, in the mere endorsement of evolution over creationism, the state is choosing sides on a question of the good life. Perhaps. But, just as in the free-speech example, I do not think the state is saying that one way of life is better or worse. They are just different. The state has to pick one over the other, because really there is no alternative, but it makes no judgments. Or it at least minimizes its judgments to the vanishing point. And that is what characterizes the liberal state.