Product Description

Between loyalty and disobedience; between recognition of the law's authority and realization that the law is not always right: in America, this conflict is historic, with results as glorious as the mass protests of the civil rights movement and as inglorious as the armed violence of the militia movement. In an impassioned defense of dissent, Stephen L. Carter argues for the dialogue that negotiates this conflict and keeps democracy alive. His book portrays an America dying from a refusal to engage in such a dialogue, a polity where, indeed, everybody speaks, but nobody listens.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #809977 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

Amazon.com Review
In this "meditation on law, religion, and morality," originally delivered as part of Harvard's annual Massey Lectures series, which has attracted speakers from Richard Rorty to Toni Morrison, Stephen L. Carter dwells on themes from his larger books, including The Culture of Disbelief, with particular attention to allegiance (and its opposite, disallegiance) to religion and state.

Working from the text of the Declaration of Independence, Carter proposes that the true measure of a democracy can be found in its treatment of those citizens who dissent with its stated values. This has been especially important in the consideration of those who disagree with the local or federal government on moral grounds rooted in religious belief; in this century alone, that has been a factor in issues ranging from pacifist activism against World War I, the nonviolent civil rights movement of the 1960s, and the continuing debate over abortion rights. It is also relevant today with regard to such issues as the provision of government funds for private (usually religious) schools. Carter reminds us that the purpose of democracy is not to impose one set of values on a diverse citizenry, but to create a space for dialogue among people of varying value systems, each of which is accorded respect and dignity.

From Booklist
From the marginalizing of religion in U.S. politics and law--his subject in The Culture of Disbelief (1993)--Carter turns to how the federal courts discount religion. His point of departure is a reading of the Declaration of Independence that stresses dissent as the criterion of government legitimacy. The extent to which government accommodates dissent is the index of citizen allegiance; if dissenters' grievances are persistently ignored, that justifies disallegiance and rebellion. Carter thinks many religious citizens' allegiance is now strained because of liberal constitutionalism, which creates a single national community concerned to "get the answers [to problems] right" and "not to worry too much about the process," but which, to do so, dismisses allegiances to other communities, religious ones in particular, that individual citizens regard as fundamental. But other allegiances have been an important corrective to government, even when they led to lawbreaking; Martin Luther King Jr. argued--cogently, Carter believes--that the civil rights movement's civil disobedience, although it arose from religious conviction, was based in a deeper allegiance to the nation. Finally, Carter finds the courts habitually dismissive of dissent (the Supreme Court found against Dr. King, he reminds us) and feeling themselves under no political obligation to individual citizens and citizen groups. He sees in the integration by the courts of constitutional interpretation and political obligation the means to accommodate democratic citizens' several loyalties for the sake of justice. Read this little book and become a better American. Ray Olson

From Kirkus Reviews
Interesting issues, disappointing book. In a series of three lectures Carter (Law/Yale) ``meditates'' on the challenge religious belief poses for political authority in American society. By reinterpreting the Declaration of Independence he first suggests that justice be measured in terms of government's response to dissenters. He then argues that the federal government's response to those who take religion seriously has been to cast them more as potential traitors whose religious faith implies a challenge to sovereignty rather than legitimate dissenters whose views deserve accommodation. For Carter a ``liberal constitutionalism'' has dominated American society, imposing an image of secular uniformity in the name of atomistic individual rights. By rushing to ``celebrate our own open-mindedness'' when embracing a seemingly neutral areligious polity, however, we overlook ``the way . . . a strongly secular bias can be . . . stultifying to people whose religious faith is at the center of their lives.'' Against the widely-accepted ``single-national-community ethos'' that requires legal uniformity Carter envisions a system of community autonomy in which ``believing families'' shape their lives around a shared faith; the goal is to allow religious believers the same political freedom to act on their beliefs as those who embrace a secular society. Unfortunately, even in local community government in accord with any set of beliefs, religious or secular, unavoidably involves leaving some people outside the favored order whenever society is not perfectly homogeneous. This would seem to be an obvious problem for Carter to address when considering practical issues, but he rushes to play the role of detached scholar in the presence of real policy questions. His apparent support for state aid to religious schools, for example, is quickly qualified by claiming that ``I am by no means advocating'' such aid, but merely arguing for its constitutionality. When addressing powerful topics, wishy-washy meditations are just not very satisfying. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

GRASPING THE OBVIOUS
The Dissent of the Governed edits and expands three lectures which Carter presented at Harvard University in 1995. They found print in 1998, though the book came into general sales only last year. Having followed Carter since The Culture of Disbelief, appreciating him, arguing with him, sometimes disagreeing with him, I opened Dissent with expectation and some trepidation. Would ideas dating from six years ago speak to the America of the twenty-first century? The answer is yes.

Carter takes his title from the line in the Declaration of Independence which declares that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Carter argues, persuasively I believe, that a test of whether or not a government is authentic and just is how it handles the dissent of its citizens. The verdict for the United States is mostly negative. The "liberal project" of the twentieth century, symbolized by the New Deal and the Great Society, and given additional energy by the Civil Rights Movement, assumed that a legitimate role of government is to enforce a common set of values in the nation. The preferred method of enforcement is through societal structures, such as the school and the house of worship. Failing that, the government is justified in using law to enforce that common set of values. Carter argues that the project might have derailed, were it not for the Second Civil War (his name for the Civil Rights Movement), which relied on the courts for legitimation. Thus the judiciary became politicized. I read Dissent immediately after the Supreme Court intervened in the 2000 election, and I was amazed at Carter's prescience. That intervention, impossible to conceive were the judiciary truly independent of politics, could indeed have been predicted by the track record of the courts. The Right is correct: The courts do indeed make law. The courts are indeed political entities, part of what Carter calls the Sovereign, or ruling power in the land. The courts have become dangerous, though, precisely because they DENY the very role which they obviously play in the life of the nation.

With an argument like this, Carter could play into the hands of the most Right of those on the Right, those who advocate not only resistance to the Sovereign but active efforts to overcome that Sovereign. Carter avoids the trap. Instead, he focuses on the power of what he calls "communities of meaning" both to preserve themselves against the power of the Sovereign and to redeem the life of the nation. Carter means religious communities, all the way from the Jewish town of Kiryas Joel to religion-based schools in otherwise secular municipalities. Active dissent to the power of the Sovereign is the responsibility of such communities of meaning because it is the right of parents to provide for the transmission of their values to their children. Such provision includes dissent from a public education system which not only excludes religious expression but is often actively hostile toward that expression. With decisions like that upholding the right of the state to proscribe the use of peyote in religious rituals, the judiciary has made public policy regarding matters that belong in the hands of communities of meaning. In an age when the weight of history moves America toward diversity, the judiciary assumes a unanimity that can never exist, and probably should not exist.

As a Christian pastor in a mainline denomination, Dissent caused me to rethink my attitudes about those institutions that usually call themselves "Christian schools." Having served for nine years in an Indiana town dominated by a conservative denomination, miniscule outside its headquarters town, I had grown weary of the almost "in-your-face" attitude of folks associated with such schools. In a new town, where the Christian school is small and sometimes struggles, I realize that I was experiencing what Christian school supporters feel almost everywhere: Active disdain, and sometimes outright hostility, from the established sovereign. Having returned from a Holy Land trip more convinced than ever of the legitimacy of Christian claims to primacy among the world's religions, I now care whether or not it is "safe" for believers to speak of the things of faith. Naturally, those who believe differently must be protected from a tyranny of either the majority or the minority. Right now, no one is protected, and no one benefits, save the Sovereign. My wife just began teaching part time at our local Christian school. I thought and spoke of Carter's book often as I visited with folks at a recent open house. Read him. Think. Inspiring thought is what Stephen Carter does best, and he thinks about things that need thinking about.

Three Meditations on Law, Religion and Loyalty
This erudite writer is one of my favorites. Having enjoyed his previous writings, this one is no exception.

He argues a salient point that the Declaration of Independence might certainly be more about government by the dissent rather than by consent. In this regard, he cites the section of the Declaration which speaks of repeated replies to dissent by continued injuries and disinterest.

He then relates this thesis through the three lenses of: Allegiance, Disobedience, Interpretation.

Making good points along the way, he concludes: If instead we celebrate, always, results over people, bureaucracy over democracy, and centralization over community, then, we are saying after all that we have no interest in the "repeated Petitions" of which the Declaration speaks, that we will, as our revolutionary forebears charged against George III, meet the petitions only with ""repeated injury." If that is what constitutionalism has wrought, it is but one more sign that our celebration of the Declaration of Independence--indeed, our claim to democracy itself--is a sham."

Only wish is that his theology in places were more Biblical, i.e. that he saw the import of Romans 13 and the true Soverign's role in placing authorities, followed by understanding the two kingdom's functioning.

That Pesky "Higher Law"
For a long time now, at least since my wife and I visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, I've been thinking about the circumstances that precipitate civil disobedience.

In order for civil disobedience to be justified (assuming, of course, that it needs to be), it must appeal to a morality higher than the law of the state. As a Christian that's not a stretch for me, and the civil rights movement (at least as articulated my MLK) found its justification in transcendent Christian principles. In the state's view, however, there sometimes is no law higher than its own. This book squarely addresses that point of conflict, and I find the author's arguments very persuasive.

One of Carter's best observations is that many progressives who once championed civil disobedience in response the Vietnam War and segregation now seek to suppress and qualify it as it relates to issues like opposition to current abortion laws. This dynamic can be observed anywhere a self-defined group opposes a mandate of the state, regardless of which component is liberal and which is conservative.

The petition of a small but vocal minority is usually considered a nuisance, but the author insists that we must be very careful about how we contend with it if we are to maintain a broad allegiance to our common purpose.