Posted by Ilya Somin:
Dinesh D'Souza on Atheism and Libertarianism:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_12_23-2007_12_29.shtml#1198571058
There is no shortage of poorly informed rants against libertarianism;
similarly, it's easy to find silly screeds against atheism. Dinesh
D'Souza, however, has achieved the unusual distinction of combining
these two art forms in[1] a single column. Let's start with the part
about libertarians:
Many libertarians are basically conservatives who are either gay or
druggies or people who generally find the conservative moral agenda
too restrictive. So they flee from the conservative to the
libertarian camp where much wider parameters of personal behavior
are embraced.
It is true that most libertarians oppose parts of "the conservative
moral agenda" (at least to the extent that that agenda is to be
enforced by the state). The rest of the above is hogwash. The vast
majority of libertarians are neither gay, nor "druggies," nor even
people with unusual personal lives of any kind. And there are very few
libertarians who have "fled" from conservatism, because most
libertarians were never conservative to begin with. There are many
prominent libertarian thinkers who are former liberals or socialists,
such as Hayek, Friedman, Richard Epstein, and quite a few others. Very
few if any were former conservatives of any kind - much less ones who
fled because they were gay or wanted to use drugs. To top it off,
D'Souza also commits the common mistake of conflating libertarian
opposition to state regulation of "personal behavior" with "embracing"
such behavior (an error also committed by more sophisticated
conservative critics of libertarianism, such as [2]Kay Hymowitz).
The anti-atheist part of D'Souza's screed is even sillier. He starts
of by suggesting that Christopher Hitchens' fondness for alcohol is
somehow related to his atheism (as if there aren't plenty of theists
who drink to excess). He ends with this:
I agree that many nominal Christians have also forgotten the
message of Christmas. Even so I wonder: what's the atheist
equivalent of Christmas? Darwin's birthday? For many libertarians I
suppose it's the day they get their tax refunds.
Here, D'Souza makes the common but foolish mistake of conflating
atheism with the theory of evolution. In reality, you can be an
atheist and reject that theory (as the Soviet Union to a large extent
did under Stalin) or be a theist and accept it (as the Catholic Church
now does). As [3]Radley Balko points out, D'Souza is seriously
misinformed if he thinks that libertarians celebrate tax refunds as
opposed to decrying them as a part of the government's deceptive
scheme to extract what are effectively coercive interest-free loans
from the taxpayers.
As for the atheist equivalent of Christmas, atheists no more need an
equivalent of Christmas than we need an equivalent of Ramadan or Yom
Kippur. Part of the point of atheism is that we do not believe in the
need for holidays that honor deities. Obviously, there are individual
atheists who celebrate some theistic holidays for cultural or family
reasons or just to have a good time. But atheism as such has no need
for "equivalents" of religious holidays. Indeed, since [4]atheism is
not a comprehensive belief system but merely a rejection of the
existence of God, it has no need of any holidays at all. Rather,
individual atheists will choose to celebrate particular holidays for
ethnic, historical, or philosophical reasons that have no connection
to atheism itself. Just as atheism is compatible with a variety of
different moral and political views, it is also compatible with a
variety of different holidays.
There once was a time when Dinesh D'Souza was a reasonably serious
public intellectual. I didn't always agree with him then, but his
writings were at least worth serious consideration. This column,
coming on the heels of [5]his book arguing that we should sacrifice
many of our freedoms in order to allay the anger of reactionary
Muslims, suggests that those days are gone. There are weighty
arguments to be made against both libertarianism and atheism. Sadly,
Dinesh D'Souza is no longer likely to be the one to make them.
References
1.
http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/12/21/how-atheists-celebrate-christmas/
2. http://volokh.com/posts/1189661948.shtml
3. http://www.theagitator.com/2007/12/22/dinesh/
4. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_12_10-2006_12_16.shtml#1166158108
5. http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-At-Home-Cultural-Responsibility/dp/0385510128
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