My most progressive views

God, health, stereotyping, and caring about the poor

Protesters at Ronald Regan Washington National Airport on June 22, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

I like to think that I have generally moderate, even-tempered views.

But like most moderates, that doesn’t mean I have a judicious difference-splitting view of each individual issue. Oftentimes those issues where I do have a judicious and nuanced view are the most interesting ones to write about. But sometimes it’s fun to zag a little too. So for a project this spring, I’m going to write one piece about some of my most progressive views, another piece about some of my most conservative views, and then last a piece about some of my views that fall into an unclassifiable horseshoe dead zone where no major faction really supports them.

I’m trying to do this in the spirit of “views that actual left-wing people and institutions support” rather than a kind of abstract semi-trolling opinion where I’m saying that my view should be the authentic progressive view.

In some sense, policymaking is not zero-sum and good ideas should be widely supported by people across the landscape. And I genuine believe that those more trolling styles of argument are sometimes useful — I really do want to persuade progressives that certain “tough on crime” policies have more alignment with progressive values than they realize.

But for the purposes of this exercise, I want to talk about my views that are already in alignment with progressives.

Starting with a big one — God.

The religion question

Politicians (with good reason) do not stand around explicitly debating theological issues. But religion is clearly very important to politics. Maine’s status as a Clinton-Biden-Harris state is hard to understand given how white and rural it is, until you realize that Northern New England is the least-religious part of the country.

Some of this is due to links between religion and specific policy issues. Many of the people who want to make abortion illegal, for example, are pretty clearly basing their view of things on a theological concept of personhood that most people reject.

Religion also drives traditionalist views of sex and gender roles. Deep religious commitment is compatible with a commitment to the principles of political liberalism, and traditionally some degree of liberalism has been a staple of American faith communities as they’ve managed to make a religiously pluralistic society work. But over the past generation, religiosity has declined, which I think has made a lot of religious people feel kind doomy and declinist about the trajectory of western society and therefore open to illiberal ideas. You really see this with someone like J.D. Vance.

For him, converting to Catholicism, campaigning for Viktor Orban, and repudiating all his previously stated criticisms of Donald Trump seem to be some kind of seamless web.

But I also think there’s a broader connection between religion and political ideas that, while not necessarily illiberal, I just don’t agree with.

I think the idea that religion is the “opiate of the masses” is overstating it, but religiosity in most cases does seem to make people more contented with the status quo allocation of material resources in the world.