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Mr. DeLay Had It Right
Absolutism and Relativism Were At the Heart of the Clinton Matter
David R. Williams
March 7, 1999; Page B2
Before we leave the subject of the recent unpleasantness in Washington,
an important point needs to be made--a point that helps reveal the
essence of the impeachment battle and why this political war is not
going to end any time soon. For President Clinton's impeachment was not
about perjury or obstruction of justice, as many Republicans maintain.
Nor was it about sex or the efforts of right-wing zealots out to get a
liberal president, as many Democrats contend. These interpretations are
too narrow, too specific, too tied to the fleeting concerns of the
moment. What we had here was nothing less than the most recent outbreak
of an argument that has echoed through Western civilization at least
since the Reformation. Itis an eternal debate between two
irreconcilable points of view about the nature of reality and the
veracity of human perceptions. Nearly
every time he got a chance, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)
would declare, "This is a debate about relativism versus absolute
truth." Few of his colleagues picked up on this. Neither did the news
media--or if it did, it most likely dismissed his words as the
fanaticism of a right-wing Christian. But DeLay was not the only one to
cast the debate in these terms. The more moderate Rep. Henry Hyde
(R-Ill.) used similar language in imploring the Senate to convict
Clinton: "Americans," he pleaded, "are hungry for people who believe in
something. You may disagree with us but we believe in something."We
believe in something. This is the battle cry of the Absolutists. They
disdain relativism. They are certain that there is a truth in the
universe, and that they know what that Truth is. Theirs is a world with
clear differences between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and
falsehood. In that world, there is no ambiguity about Clinton's guilt.With
this certainty comes, logically, a belief that everyone else must share
the same perceptions--that the truth is obvious to all. Hence, the
Republican managers' constant appeal to "common sense" and the
black-and-white morality of children.The relativists, on the
other hand, accept no absolute truth. In fact, they even question their
own perceptions. They suspect, as Albert Einstein once said, that
common sense is nothing more than childhood prejudice. If there is some
truth in the universe, they are certain only that they do not know it.
Like the poet Wallace Stevens, they can imagine 13 ways of looking at a
blackbird. And they can imagine 13 reasons why Clinton has committed no
crime worthy of tossing him out of office.The larger context for
Hyde's oratorical appeal can be found in his party's determination to
act as a bulwark against what it sees as a disintegration of
traditional values that began in the 1960s. In the Republican
narrative, the hippies and the "counterculture McGovernites" abandoned
the faith of their elders to follow their own whims. As a result, say
the Republicans, the dominoes of social stability began to fall.
Abortion, sex, drugs, violence burst into American life, threatening to
destroy the country. And William Jefferson Clinton, like the white
whale from "Moby Dick," became the symbol of all these things. Wonder
ye then at the fiery hunt?But the clash between the Republicans
and the Clintonites was itself but an echo of a greater struggle
between liberty and law, anarchy and structure that has been with us
for centuries.Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this
historic struggle is the Protestant Reformation, which drenched
Christian Europe in blood in the 16th century and led zealots like
England's Oliver Cromwell and New England's Cotton Mather to wage holy
wars in the 17th. The central issue of the Reformation was one of
authority. Did it flow from the top down--from the institutions of
church, state and society, to the faithful below? Or did it, as Martin
Luther proclaimed, flow from the bottom up, from the hearts of the
believers?For Catholics, the slogan of the Reformation--sola
fides ("faith alone")--was a call for anarchy. To them, faith alone
represented a rejection of absolute rules in favor of personal
inspiration; it meant a turning away from traditional authority in
favor of obedience to some whimsical spirit within.And the
sacraments of the competing faiths reflected this division. Catholic
dogma insisted that the wine and the wafer of communion were the
literal body and blood of Christ. Not so, said Protestants like Luther
and John Calvin. The wafer was just a symbol of Christ, not the real
thing.Then as now, this was a fight of absolutism versus
relativism--whether rituals and words have some true presence at the
core, or whether they are merely symbolic and hence subjective and
uncertain.Even within Protestantism, absolutists and relativists
fought it out. Thus, in the Radical Reformation, rebellious peasants
claimed that they had gone beyond uncertainty and experienced the truth
of Christ subjectively; upon those rocks they intended to build a new
world. Many of those enthusiasts fled Europe to build their new world
in the wilderness of America.In the Puritan colony of
Massachusetts, Gov. John Winthrop warned his "antinomian"
colonists--the term refers to those spiritual anarchists who believed
in faith alone, rather than obedience to moral law--that they must
respect communal authority and not follow their own whims. But the
antinomians believed that they carried in their hearts the real
presence of God, not whims. The debate was a familiar one, with
Winthrop afraid that human perceptions were the tool of the devil and
the antinomian Anne Hutchinson convinced of the holiness of her own
impressions.This debate doesn't exist only in theological and
political circles. American academics have embraced what is called
"postmodernism," a theory that preaches uncertainty and absence instead
of certainty and presence. The postmodernists claim that there is
"nothing outside the text" that suggests words have no true
meaning--they are only symbols that point to other words, which
themselves are only symbols.There is no rock in postmodernism
upon which to build a church. Nothing is absolute. Language itself has
no fixed meaning. It is all a web of deception and lies serving human
self-interest. It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is.As
in Protestantism, many of the academic postmodernists are not in fact
as committed to relativism as their theory proclaims. Heirs of the
'60s, many are still committed to moral stances--against racism,
against sexism. Underneath the postmodernist talk of absence and
uncertainty and humility are many Cromwells ready to take up the sword
or Cotton Mathers willing to see their enemies hung by the neck. Like
the Puritans of old, they would purify society of evil and enforce
their own moral code.The words and actions of conservative
Republicans such as DeLay and Hyde must be seen in this light. They
fear that a significant portion of the American population, whether
they know its name or not, has fallen for the siren call of postmodern
thinking. Like Winthrop, they see this antinomianism as a danger, and
they are frustrated that the American public does not share their
certain view of the world.But the American people, having been
there before, seem to understand that there are two sides to this
debate. There is certainly a danger in 1960s-style antinomian anarchy.
But on the other hand, there is a real danger in 1690s-style religious
zealotry. Americans are, as Hyde said, "hungry for belief in
something." But whose beliefs and in what? Between the old-fashioned
religious zealots of the Christian Right, and the postmodern zealots of
the radical left, Clinton seems like a reasonable compromise.One
of the ironies of this is that the GOP, the party of laissez-faire
capitalism, has become dominated by moral absolutists, while the
Democrats champion a social laissez-faire that includes no absolutes
and allows the party to flow with the whims of public perceptions. And
that is where the American public historically has been most at
home--not on the side of structure from the top down, but of subjective
perception from the bottom up. Sola Fides, faith alone.Perhaps
the whole American experiment, from Anne Hutchinson on, has been a holy
mistake. Perhaps we shouldn't trust our whims. But we self-reliant
Americans, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, want the freedom to follow our
whims. In this instance of the great debate, with the country strong
and the economy humming, Americans have--as they often have in the
past--come to side with the relativistic, solipsistic freedom of the
spirit.But our need for structure also is strong. And that's why this debate is far from over.David
Williams, an adjunct professor of English at George Mason University,
has a degree from Harvard Divinity School and is writing a book on
theology and the '60s.
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