Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Defunding the Idolstate

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The secularist does not believe that God occupies any space above human society. And because it is obvious that there is room above human society, the secularist state aspires to get into that room. To modify the words of Augustine, or Pascal maybe, there is a God-shaped vacuum above the king. Once we decide that there is no God above the king, the king becomes God. Once we decide there is no "highest authority" above the state, the state becomes the highest authority.

This is why it is the natural impulse for secularists to grow the state. Without God, man is naturally an idolator and he prefers tangible idols, idols he can carve and paint and bow down to. Some secularists have some capacity for abstraction, and so they place their trust in the laws of logic or Adam Smith's invisible hand. But for the most part, secularists over time will always prefer the visible hand of the state to the invisible hand. The invisible hand is too close to Christian orthodoxy for comfort -- the secularist always retreats to things he believes he can manipulate.

And so, in our political debates, there are basically two positions -- with each option having its own intramural debates, of course. One position wants the idolstate to have an increased allowance next year, and the other wants the idolstate to have a decreased allowance next year. There you go. Politics made simple.

The most important phrase in there is next year. A theoretical Marxist could say that he wants the state to have an allowance of zero -- but only after we get some important things done, after we have fixed things, and the state then dutifully withers away. His would be what I call an eschatological anarchism, which is to say, worthless anarchism. So the two real positions are -- more money or less money next year.

And of course, we have to rightly categorize those mendacious manipulators who believe that slowing the rate of increase should count as decreasing the allowance. That's like a three-hundred-pound man who was gaining ten pounds a month taking great pride in how he was "losing weight" because he got to the point where he was only gaining seven pounds a month. But enough about the Republicans.

So let us have our vigorous debates. Should the federal budget be cut by ten percent or forty percent? Those are debates about how to defund the idolstate, not whether to defund the idolstate. And so let us have those debates, with the task before us being to cut off funds for the next available budget cycle. And so the choice is stark -- you either want to defund the idolstate, or you want to defend the idolstate.

Editor's Note: On the issue of defunding the idolstate, some leading US politicians are starting to call for just that. The House Republican Economic Working Group has launched a grass-roots, YouCut initiative.