The Archbishop of Cant

The Prelate of the Church of England has stirred just indignation over and right criticism of his suggestion that the United Kingdom ought to allow her people to choose whether to live under English common law or sharia law. "Treason." "Dangerous." "[F]olking nuts." The descriptions are apt.

I am thus surprised and disappointed to stumble upon Eugene Volokh's defense of the Archibishop's proposal. (He supplements his defense here.) Volokh's argument can briefly be summarized. He analogizes choice of sharia law to a choice of the law of a foreign jurisdiction in an arbitration contract, prenuptial, or other antecedent agreement. These agreements, and the choices of law they contain, are generally enforceable in the United States. Volokh then supposes that choice of sharia law in the UK would be constrained by certain unidentified exceptions. He asserts, "No-one is talking about executing apostates, only about providing for an alternate way to resolve normal civil disputes related to financial transactions, divorce, and the like."

Au contraire. In the real world, where events that shatter liberal illusions go unreported by the liberal media, many Muslims are talking about executing apostates. And executing their daughters. And executing homosexuals, and Christians, and Budweiser salesmen...

Professor Volokh isn't liberal (I would not slander him so) and he generally has good sense. Perhaps he meant to write that the Archbishop of Canterbury isn't talking about executing apostates. That is true. But the Prelate's silence on this matter is at least equally as troubling as the certitude of so many Islamic fascists. That Professor Volokh and the Archbishop perceive no fundamental difference between the choice of sharia law and the choice of Texas law betrays a surfeit of understanding. Indeed, the Archbishop declaimed that "a detailed discussion of the nature of sharia" is "far beyond my competence."

No doubt it is beyond my competence as well. But to pretend that those provisions of sharia that endorse honor killings, forced marriages, spousal abuse, and those which prohibit the education of women and freedom of speech, are somehow ancillary to or severable from more universally-accepted tenets is to misstate the situation. Do those Muslims who clamber to live under sharia ask merely for enforcement of those parts of shari'a that are acceptable to their non-Muslim countrymen? Of course not. If they sought only enforcement of those provisions that are consistent with English common law then what would be the point in demanding a separate body of law at all?

Muslims are not relativists. Perhaps this is a case of the lesser failing to comprehend the greater. The Archbishop fails to comprehend the truth claims of sharia because, having submerged himself in multicultural relativism, he has lost the ability to reason. The truth claims of Islamic fascists are troubling, but they are at least robust and clear. Contrast the clarity of sharia with the following tripe from the Archbishop's speech.

There is a position – not at all unfamiliar in contemporary discussion – which says that to be a citizen is essentially and simply to be under the rule of the uniform law of a sovereign state, in such a way that any other relations, commitments or protocols of behaviour belong exclusively to the realm of the private and of individual choice. As I have maintained in several other contexts, this is a very unsatisfactory account of political reality in modern societies; but it is also a problematic basis for thinking of the legal category of citizenship and the nature of human interdependence.

What is the Prelate saying here? Who can interpret such mush? To the extent that he is saying anything at all, he appears to be disparaging the rule of common law. Is it any wonder that the Islamic fascists consider Western civilization easy prey?

Another reason why Obama must be stopped

As Titus pointed out last week, Barack Obama is a very talented orator. He convinces his audiences to suspend disbelief, skepticism, and knowledge of history. Not only does he dress the failed policies of Carter and LBJ as the change of the future, he leaves grown women in tears as he does so.

Here's another reason why Obama must not succeed in his bid for the presidency: in addition to failed policies he offers obsolete philosophical dogmas. A friend emailed me the following passage from Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope. I refuse to buy the book and so have not confirmed the accuracy of the passage, but the source is trustworthy.

It's not just absolute power the founders sought to prevent. Implicit in it's (the constitution's) structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or "ism," any tyrannical suggestion that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.

Leave aside for the moment the astonishing hubris. Focus on the proposition: "Implicit in [the constitution] was a rejection of absolute truth." This philosophical dogma has a name. It's called legal positivism. Positivism was very fashionable in jurisprudential circles early in the twentieth century but had a very short shelf life. Within less than a generation positivism came and went for the same reason that all relativistic philosophies evanesced: it defeated itself. The folly of the relativistic fallacy, on which positivism was predicated -- all truth claims are relative except the truth claim that all truth claims are relative -- was and is obvious to a fifth grader.

That positivism has endured long after its academic proponents renounced it remains a great puzzle. It makes frequent appearances in the writings of certain Supreme Court justices (see the infamous mystery-of-life passage from Justice Kennedy's opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey) and is sprinkled throughout the arguments of willfully ignorant contemporary liberals. It frequently appears when a secular liberal bemoans the supposed arrogations of Christianity. Most of the people who invoke positivism don't read very much and cannot be expected to know that this academic fad went out with big-band swing dancing. The philosophical company that Obama keeps, much like the social company he keeps, is thus quite suspect. And this from a law professor!

That's not all we can learn from this passage. This is a rich vein indeed. Barack Obama rejects absolute truth claims. "Slavery is immoral and ought to be legally prohibited," is an absolute truth claim. So is, "Fathers ought not sexually abuse their daughters." These tyrannical suggestions ought not, according to Barack, lock future generations into a single, unalterable course.

Of course, this assertion of Obama's, like most of his assertions, is not an argument but a slander. Like the assertion "Poverty in America is a moral issue," it is predicated upon an incendiary presupposition, designed to close debate and draw attention away from Obama's vacuity. According to Obama, the conservative's prudential disagreement over the role of government in aiding the poor results from an inadequate moral syllogism. And according to the Senator from Illinois those who make absolute truth claims in the end resort to the "cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad."

I don't mind being slandered by a man who appears not to read very much, but I cannot abide the thought that he might someday be my president.