free variable

My grandfather referred me to this First Things article; it neatly explores what’s right and wrong with liberal democracy, at least in terms of its capacity to coexist with religion and policies informed by religion (or anything motivated by absolutes independent of utilitarian mobthink). A choice quote:

The what we want of contemporary liberal theory is the exercise of our freedom of choice, or, more properly, our freedoms of choice. Modern liberalism shares its ideological foundations with free–market capitalism, because both envision human beings as bundles of preferences. The role of the liberal state (like the role of the market) is to create spaces in which the maximum number of preferences can be pursued, with the minimum amount of interference with the pursuit by others of their own preferences. In contemporary partisan politics (not to be confused with liberal theory), all sides have surrendered to this ideology. The fact that Republicans seem to think the preferences that matter most are economic and the Democrats seem to think the preferences that matter most are sexual and reproductive should not blind us to the simple truth that both parties are up to the same mischief: in real America today, as in the hypothetical America of liberal theory, it is the individual, unconnected to any sense of self–restraint, who matters most.

I suppose that summarizes why I find it fairly easy to find exponents of both major parties equally distasteful.