America shuns the sacred, and is impoverished

Libertarian Republicans and ACLU Democrats speak a similar language when it comes to rights and the sacred. Both believe it is the free choice of the individual that is sacred, and nothing else.

Many of America's current problems in relations with the developing world arise because religious men coming to dominance in the global South -- along with traditionally minded communal authorities in Asia -- don't think this way.

For them, the shrinking of the social order to the defense of individual autonomy is a surrender of moral authority necessary for both political and religious community. True American conservatives must agree.

It is precisely in their attitudes toward rights and the sacred that conservatives are -- or used to be -- very different from the libertarians who have gained such sway with the economic right (and the sexual left). A libertarian aims to maximize the freedom of the individual, in thoughts, words and deeds. The boundary of an individual's freedom is to be found only where it collides with the freedom of another.

A conservative asserts that there is a sacred order, which any just and successful social order must reflect. Man does not make this sacred order. It is a given reality, determining the nature and needs of man much as the external reality of the sun determines the movement of the Earth through space. The church, the mosque and the synagogue seek to attune the worshiper to the creator of this sacred order.

American religious liberty presupposes that there exists a divine being we must worship who maintains a divine order. Religious liberty does not mean that man has no duty to God. The state simply yields to the authority of religious bodies in organizing people to perform this sacred duty.

The nation and the city are social bodies, which ultimately derive their authority from the same God that religious communities formally worship. Political conservatives, old-style Catholic Democrats and black Baptists are all alike in asserting that the civic order must abide within the transcendent sacred order. Similarly, in China, a ruler will soon lose his authority if he loses the "Mandate from Heaven," which does not refer to the assent of the people. The governing authority is obliged to act properly in accordance with a preexisting order.

The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and his burial at sea revealed that America is still able to understand the sacred. We killed Osama bin Laden because he was our enemy. We buried him respectfully because he was a man. It is one of our sacred tenets that humans are made in the image of God, and the human body is not to be treated as an animal carcass. For this reason, when U.S. troops go astray and mistreat enemy corpses, we do not cheer, we punish.

The physician, the mortician and our soldiers manifest this truth in customs and traditions not shared with the meatpacking industry.

Americans, too, must demand that our sacred goods are not defiled. Burning our flag, violating the integrity of our diplomatic space, and defiling the dead bodies of our murdered citizens or fallen soldiers are all offenses against sacred goods. But the libertarian mind-set diminishes our capacity to respond to these acts.

The category of sacred things, and the idea of national honor, are becoming foreign to us -- except as the sensibilities of foreigners. By banishing God from our public life, we are as a people forfeiting communal symbols of the sacred. We can't formally, as a civic body, thank God on graduation day. But every teenage girl at the mall and every sitcom star in prime time can take God's name in vain. By cheapening the name of God, we can no longer properly cash that sacred currency during events that require an appeal to the transcendent order.

This national impoverishment is never more obvious than when we suffer through the official responses of college presidents and high school principals to the deaths of students. "We will be thinking of you," we hear. "We are all still Aggies."

We have voluntarily flattened our national vocabulary so we cannot speak with authority about any reality that transcends the material. This matters. The Cold War pitted a nation "under God" against a proudly materialist state. Should we wonder who won?

But we need to wonder this: Now that our national identity has been stripped of any sacred ideal and given over to a default practical atheism, how long will we be able to stir the courage of our sons and the loyalty of religious allies to isolate and defeat an enemy who kills in the name of God?

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