Jonah Goldberg Wants You to Know that He's Sort of a Fundamentalist Christian at Heart

Last week, Jonah Goldberg revealed a spiritually lofty side to his character.  Writing in NRO, Goldberg whined about Andrew Sullivan's new book The Conservative Soul and Sullivan's 'jihad on certainty.'  Volunteering for the defense of religious fundamentalism and certainty, Goldberg invoked the names of Thomas More, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Socrates. Goldberg believes that these saints were driven to acts of heroic virtue by a sense of certainty.  Maybe Goldberg actually studies the lives of saints to draw inspiration and strength as he travels the lonely road of besieged truther, but I have some doubt about that possibility just as I have doubt about whether Goldberg understands anything about the motivations of a martyr.

Socrates was a guy who did nothing but ask questions, so I'm not sure why Goldberg has decided that Socrates was emboldened by certainty.  And, unless Goldberg is a mind reader, I can't imagine how he knows that Rosa Parks was certain rather than merely confident and courageous.  I've made a few very ballsy decisions during my lifetime because I thought they were morally right decisions; what made them ballsy was that I was completely uncertain about how things would go.  I did what I thought was right in spite of the fear that comes with uncertainty rather than because of fearless certainty. If I'd had certainty, my actions might not have required courage.

As for his Christian heroes, Goldberg, who is not a martyr, is certain that Joan of Arc, MLK and Thomas More were likewise driven to great sacrifice by a sense of certainty. If I were to hazard a guess, Goldberg sees a similarity between the certainty of saints and the certainty of Messrs. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle et al.  Fortunately, none of those neocon heroes have been murdered for their beliefs as Goldberg's favorite martyrs were, although Dick Cheney once shot a man in the face (he was certain that he was shooting at a duck).

And, while Goldberg claims that certainty drives saints to put their own lives at risk for a cause, the enlistment eligible columnist has yet to express his certainty by putting his own pastey hide on the line.  Perhaps Goldberg feels certain that we would be better served if other people died for his sense of certainty.  Or, perhaps he feels certain that he can more effectively emulate his Christian heroes by fearlessly exercising his right to certainty as a well-paid syndicated scribe.  Then again, maybe Goldberg isn't really so certain.

Having more than a passing familiarity with Christianity, I feel that it's incumbent upon me at this point to offer some clarification on the matter of Christians and certainty.  Many Christians believe that humanity is inherently and fundamentally alienated from truth.  Christians believe that humanity is in need of God's grace and forgiveness because we humans are innately and chronically in error.  Accordingly, Christian courage does not derive from certainty about earthly matters such as politics, but from faith in God and trust in grace as one tries to live a morally decent Christ-centered life in a world of human uncertainty.  Because of this uncertainty, human beings should be humble and take risks for moral conviction emboldened by faith rather than certainties about the world.  It's called risk because we don't know.  And above all else, there is no moral virtue in sending others to take risks that one would be personally unwilling to undertake if given the chance.

Part of the confusion about certainty arises when men like Goldberg blur the distinctions between factual certainty and moral conviction which, at its best, requires a fundamental commitment to ongoing discernment of the truth about one's motives and conceits, particularly the conceit of certainty.  Neocons who have taken up the cause of certainty will frequently mischaracterize their opponent's beliefs claiming that those of us who challenge the human capacity for factual certainty have rejected the notion of all truth including moral truth.  It's an absurd claim and a straw man that is frequently invoked when neocon hubris is challenged.

What the Jonah Goldbergs of this world fail to appreciate is that moral truth is relational; it entails relations between subject and object.  Believers in human certainty live in a world where moral conviction is sought in some imaginary, static, stand-alone nature of things, rather than in relationships between between seeing, aware, perspective-limited beings.  The certainty position severs good and evil from being and meaning, turning morality into a thing while reducing human beings to the status of biological machines.  In completely dismissing the insights of post-modernism, Goldberg and his ilk reduce moral life to the status of a free-floating substance with meaning independent of the beings who create meaning. They fail to grasp that it is only in the difficult, uncertain relational matrix where moral possibilities, moral truth and moral conviction can be pursued meaningfully.

The absurdity of things being any other way becomes clear when we attempt to speak of love or hate as if they occur independent of an observer-observed, intersubjective context.  What moral meaning or moral truth can be found independently of a perspective-bound relational context?  Stones cannot love or hate, except perhaps in the mind of a Jonah Goldberg.

Of course there are a few Christian sects that have signed on to the notion that human beings are capable of certainty about a world seen only in very concrete, factual terms.  Those Christians don't have a well-known honor roll of martyrs.  Like the smugly certain Mr. Goldberg who seems disinclined to exercise his right to put his own life on the line, many of these Christians prefer to exercise their sense of certainty by writing science curricula and by putting propositions on ballots.

In the end, though, I doubt that Goldberg holds Christian martyrs in great esteem or that he has the slightest notion of what motivates them. Goldberg's column comes across more like a ham-handed effort to stem the evacuation of Christian conservatives from the neocon cause.  The disintegration of this cynical alliance was inevitable because neocons believe in the supremacy of man, while Christians believe in human brokenness, the folly of human adventurism and the supremacy of God.

Even though Christians often fail miserably, they are occasionally humbled by the messes they make, leading them to declare that, once again, they have been made fools by their own arrogant pretenses to certainty.  Every time neocons attack the straw man of postmodernism believing that these attacks will appeal to Christian conservative moral sensibilities, they unwittingly send a second and far more subtle message about the neocon faith in the supremacy of human will and action.  The manifest message of unbridled confidence in humanly knowable truth and the grandiose schemes of men has worn very thin with many Christians, having been eaten away by the rot of latent hubris contained in the message.

As one martyr not on Goldberg's list said of certainty, we human beings see, but we see 'through a glass darkly.'  That's 'darkly,' Jonah, not 'certainly.'  Look it up.

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Comments

[Dwilkers]

Why not just say you hate Goldberg and save the pixels? FWIW I don't like him either. His writing is poor - he mistakes sarcasm for cleverness and he's far too arrogant.

But you've mis characterized his column in needing to hate him as you do. His focus isn't Christianity - yours is. Put it this way, I read your blog, then the column, and I was surprised when I read the column because it doesn't say what you want your readers to think it says - although it IS typical Goldberg drivel.

And FWIW, the Goldberg bio you linked says he was born in 69. That makes him 37, meaning his "pastey hide" is not enlistment eligible. And a quail isn't a duck either.

Nothing wrong with hating people...I guess. I'd certainly say it is misplaced energy and counter productive though. Anybody worth taking so seriously as to need hating is worth addressing directly though, and your blog doesn't discuss his argument.

[Dr. X.]

Dwilkers,

Why don't you just say you hate Dr. X. and save the pixels?

In the first line of the second paragraph of his column, Goldberg says:

"Andrew Sullivan, in his new book The Conservative Soul, declares a jihad on certainty, by which he means the certainty of fundamentalist “Christianists” Let me help you with the math:

Goldberg says that 'jihad on certainty' = jihad on 'certainty of fundamentalist Christianists.' Then Goldberg defends certainty.

Goldberg also names three Catholic saints and a Baptist minister (King) in his short list of heroes to bolster his defense of what?... certainty. And, you believe this was completely incidental to the purpose of the article. Are you certain of that? Maybe you just clicked the wrong link and missed all of that.

And the maximum Army enlistment age was upped to 40 in January 2005 and 42 in June 2006. http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1886067.php

And you're right about Cheney; he was certain it was a quail, but it was a man he shot in the face. So much for Cheney's certainty, your certainty and my certainty.

[Dwilkers]

My point, I thought, was pretty clearly made. You've mis characterized his column.

I read the column, I saw the sentence about Sullivan's book - a single sentence in a paragraph listing references to others as well, including an atheist (does that make the column about atheism?).

That doesn't make the column about Christianity, which anyone reading your blog post about it would think was the case.

What his column is really about though is the same thing your blog post is about - avoiding what people are really saying by talking past them. Constructing and knocking down strawmen. He constructs and knocks down strawmen about liberal argumentation. You construct and knock down strawmen about Christian theology.

You've certainly done a good job of correcting Goldberg about Christian belief. The only thing is we have no idea what he really thinks about the issues you've blogged about because he didn't say anything whatever about them.

Or more broadly, if you prefer, my point is we're better served by treating each other with the respect to at least address one another honestly and directly.

You're a psychoanalyst. Have you restated Goldberg's column correctly? Would he agree with your characterization of what he said?

[Dr. X.]

Dwilkerson,

I wasn't restating Goldberg's column. I explained Goldberg's transparent political motivation for the column and exposed the fatuousness of his defense of certainty.

Goldberg was clear about linking certainty and Christian fundamentalism. If he had no intention of linking the two he wouldn't have done so. Goldberg was also clear that he believes certainty motivated all six persons he mentioned, 4 of whom were martyred Christians. I disputed the bases for his belief about the motivations of all six (see the second and third paragraphs of my post).

The neocons and fundamentalist Christians who subscribe to a particular end times vision have had a marriage of political convenience with respect to their shared support for the war. Both are resisting the breakdown of that marriage. While I merely disagree with the neocons, I find the the fundamentalists' movtives, which are based upon a literalist interpretation of biblical prophecy, to be misguided and dangerous.

Goldberg is working the neocon side of the marriage. Methinks you have a side in this too.

[David Flores]

You're totally, completely wrong: Cheney was certain he was shooting quail.

As far as Goldberg goes, though, you're totally, completely right.

Actually, it's pretty dumb of Goldberg to cite Martin Luther King Jr, who was a committed, absolutist pacifist. It just demonstrates how praise for absolutism in all its guises is little more than a prescription for endless war. You might as well praise Osama Bin Ladin, or the 9/11 hijackers.

[MoeLarryAndJesus]

I know it's a typo, but in your first reference to Joan of Arc you spelled her name "Joan of Ark" - which reminded me of an old Harper's Index item which said that 7% of Americans thought she was Noah's wife.

I suspect that our population is significantly dumber now and that the 7% is now well into double figures.

[Dr. X.]

Wasn't she Noah's wife? Just kidding. Thank you ML&J. When I was pondering Goldberg's heroes I Googled Joan of Arc and read a similar reference to a high percentage of teens who believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. I guess exposure to such things can lead to a contagion of error, but I'll also consider the possible unconscious allusions to ‘end times,’ floods, fish, Jonah, and an assortment of other possibilities.

[Dwilkers]

"Methinks you have a side in this too."

Yeah? What do you think it is? You can read my mind too then I guess. By all means tell us what I think Dr. X.

I'll tell you what bothers me - then you can tell me what it really is. Our polity has broken down into a state of incivility. A lot of it has to do with the anonymity of the web I suspect. I rarely say much about it though, because appalling as it is I suspect a lot of the people that engage in this sort of thing don't know any better, but when I see a highly educated person engaging in it I'm floored.

"I wasn't restating Goldberg's column." Strawman, but congrats for knocking it down successfully. I didn't say you were, or should have, but thanks for clearing that up. You wrote something like 12 paragraphs criticizing him about a column he wrote. Therefore your mis characterizing his column is important, no?

Politicians play this game but they're playing to the lowest common denominator. Blogs, generally, are not.

Actually calling it mis characterization is over generous, especially at this point.

What makes it even more foolish is Goldberg is an idiot, and getting a piece of him is easy enough over what he actually does say.

- Isn't it kind of silly to have a spam filter AND manual comment approval BTW? Wouldn't one or the other be enough? I've never seen anyone do this before.

[Dr. X.]

Dwilkers,

In your previous comment you did indeed ask me:

“Have you restated Goldberg's column correctly?

Now, to the more bizarre:

“I'll tell you what bothers me… Our polity has broken down into a state of incivility.”

Dwilkers, let's be serious. In the same comment you also said:

“What makes it even more foolish is Goldberg is an idiot, and getting a piece of him is easy enough over what he actually does say.”

Dwilkers, I've seen your comments in other blogs, so you can save the mock indignation for someone who isn’t acquainted with your notions of civility. Do you recall this gem?

http://tinyurl.com/y9phck

Posted by: Dwilkers | May 26, 2006 at 10:05 AM

You're priceless and I'm finished with this conversation.

[Apollo]

I haven't seen pomo stuff like this since college. I mean, analyzing a columnist's motivations for writing a column? (Hint--it can be exchanged for goods and services) "Cynical alliance," "latent hubris," and even bringing up the chicken hawk meme. Priceless!

[Jake]

Goldberg is just another cog in the right wing noise machine. Their Christianity, like Coulter the great Godless hunter's, manifests itself in pro-life, pro-school prayers anti-homosexuality, and the not-so-unspoken belief that W. is God's man on earth. If millions of ignorant peons buy that crap, then the USA gets what it deserves. Those neocons may talk like Christians, or Prager Jews, but their transparent motives are hate, fear, cruelty and greed.

[Tom Maguire]

Can we roll the tape? Here is Goldberg's intro:

Have you heard the news? Belief is bad.

Pick up an eggheady book review, an essay in Time magazine, or listen to a thumb-suck session on National Public Radio for very long and you’ll soon hear someone explain that real conviction — dogmatism! — is dangerous.

Andrew Sullivan, in his new book The Conservative Soul, declares a jihad on certainty, by which he means the certainty of fundamentalist “Christianists” — the allusion to Islamists is deliberate. The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait proclaims that liberalism is the anti-dogmatic ideology. Sam Harris, a leading proselytizer for atheism, has declared a one-man crusade on religious certainty. Intellectual historian J.P. Diggins writes in the latest issue of The American Interest that there’s a war afoot for “the soul of the American Republic” between the forces of skepticism and infallibility. And so on.

Much of this stems from the popularity of Bush hatred these days. Bush’s alleged “messianic certainty” — to use Sen. Barack Obama’s words — is dangerous and evil in the eyes of supposedly meek and nuanced liberals.

The rot, not surprisingly, has reached Hollywood. For example, in Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas caved to the fashionable anti-absolutism that comes with Bush hatred by having a young Obi-Wan Kenobi proclaim, “Only a Sith lord deals in absolutes!” Translation: Only evil people see the world as black-and-white. This signaled that Lucas’s descent into hackery was complete, since it was Lucas himself who originally explained that the entire universe is divided into light and dark sides.

I do not read that as Goldberg tackling religious certainty exclusively; I read that as Goldberg citing (and reflecting) critics of certainty, *including* religious certainty.

For example, Barack Obama cited Bush's "messianic certainty". Should we conclude that Obama thinks Bush is the messiah? Or that Obama thinks Bush believes himself to be the messiah? Or might it just be a metaphor?

Goldberg's point seems to be that the left is trying to shut down certain debates by claiming that advocates for particular viewpoints are automatically disqualified by dint of their conviction. Obama's reference to Bush would be such an example (how can we take seriously a guy who thinks he is the messiah?).

Now, maybe the left has been careful to distinguish between faith-based certainty and fact-based certainty and Goldberg is deliberately blurring that distinction - that would be an argument worth advancing.

However, I agree with Dwilkers - Goldberg's column came as quite a surprise after reading this response to it.

[jen]

No one has mentioned that Goldberg uses Sam Harris' The End of Faith as evidence for a war on certainty, which couldn't be more ridiculous.

Anyone who's read Harris' book knows that he's damn sure of all his positions - certain beyond all measure. He advocates and hopes for the eradication all religious institutions everywhere because he's so certain.