MICHELLE GOLDBERG I’m Michelle Goldberg.

ross douthat

I’m Ross Douthat.

david leonhardt

I’m David Leonhardt, and this is “The Argument.” This week, is President Trump taking us toward war with Iran?

bret stephens

I can’t think of any other country that commits what appear to be acts of piracy on the high seas.

david leonhardt

Then have conservatives given up on liberal democracy?

ross douthat

He’s reacting to the sense that in the new liberal culture, you get Drag Queen Story Hours. And if you’re an evangelical florist who doesn’t want to do flowers for a same sex wedding, you get fined and driven out of business.

david leonhardt

And finally, a recommendation.

michelle goldberg

O.K. So let me tell you why this would ruin my life. [THEME MUSIC PLAYING]

david leonhardt

Tensions between the United States and Iran are rising. The situation feels dangerous and unstable. The Trump administration has revoked the Obama administration’s deal with Iran that was meant to keep that country from acquiring nuclear weapons. Trump has instead imposed tough new sanctions on Iran with the goal of weakening the regime there and getting it to stop its aggressive behavior across the Middle East. The sanctions are clearly hurting Iran’s economy. And the government there has been getting more aggressive in response, apparently attacking two commercial ships and restarting its nuclear production. Iran’s goal is to have the United States or possibly Europe back off the sanctions. It’s not clear what is going to happen next. To talk about all this, we have our colleague Bret Stephens joining us. Brett recently wrote a hawkish and much-discussed column that said the United States should be ready to attack Iran’s Navy if Iran did not back down. So Brett, what does success look like?

bret stephens

Well, success looks like a new deal that puts the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran permanently out of reach. And I don’t think that that’s really out of the question. I think the Obama administration didn’t use nearly enough pressure on Iran during the negotiations to achieve just that kind of deal. People think that Iran is a regional superpower. Iran is a country with profound problems that has an economy about the size of greater Boston. So its ability to sustain extreme economic pressure and isolation is not particularly great. What I’d like to see at the end state, if it were up to me, would be what I call normalization for normalization, which is to say we should have the same kind of relationship we have with this regime in Iran that the many American presidents had with the Shah’s regime back in the day: exchange of students, diplomatic relations, economic ties, American tourists in the bazaars of Tehran and Isfahan, an Iranian embassy in the United States. But Iran has to normalize, particularly along two important fronts. Number one: It shouldn’t have access to a full nuclear fuel cycle. We don’t allow it for an ally like South Korea, so there’s no reason why Iran should have it. Number two: Iran should not be sponsoring Hezbollah, the Houthis, armed militias in Iraq throughout the region. It shouldn’t be committing what appear to be, at least according to the evidence we’ve seen, basically acts of piracy in its regional waters. That ought not to be a big ask. So what I’d like to see is that be the conclusion. I’m not urging a war, which I think at the end of the day would be catastrophic.

ross douthat

I think my colleagues are probably more likely to disagree with you about the wisdom of the original nuclear deal that the Obama administration made. I’m totally open to the possibility that backing out of that deal was either a net win or just sort of neutral for the U.S. What I’m deeply skeptical of is the specifics of the Trump administration strategy right now. I’m curious, one, if we accept that Iran is a strictly regional power with a weak economy that isn’t a major geopolitical threat along the lines of certainly China, arguably Russia, but then we also accept that we have lots of examples, including in North Korea, of regimes that have withstood severe outside pressure for long periods of time — and Iran has, in fact, been under outside pressure for a pretty long period of time without having the regime crack or dissolve or reform itself. Then it seems like the combination of the Trump administration going beyond leaving the nuclear deal and going into what they themselves describe as a sort of maximum pressure campaign gets you in a cycle toward a regional war in which we would potentially recapitulate a lot of the disasters of most of our regional wars in the Middle East over the last 20 years. If you think the nuclear deal was a bad deal, why not just stop by pulling out? Why are we pushing in this mode that seems designed to escalate tensions and doesn’t seem, to me, to have the kind of normalization for normalization end game likely at the end of it?

bret stephens

I think we need a new deal. And you’re not going to achieve it by simply withdrawing from the deal, but otherwise changing none of the circumstances. Iran isn’t quite like North Korea. It’s not wholly isolated from the world— not at all. It has not been a kind of cult of personality style regime, at least since the days of Khomeini. There are large aspects of Iranian society, Iranian government, that want at least some kind of partial integration. They want the benefits of relations with the outside world without some of the responsibilities. So I think they’re susceptible to sustained economic pressure, which puts the Iranian regime to a kind of fundamental choice, which is to say you can have a nuclear program or you can have a functioning economy. And my objection to the past deal is it basically said to them you can have both. You just have to sequence it. First, you get the functioning economy eventually. You’re going to get a nuclear program. That really ought to be unacceptable, because Iran is a regime that behaves in ways which are profoundly destabilizing— not just for the region, but for the global economy as a whole. I can’t think of any other country that commits what appear to be acts of piracy on the high seas. That’s something that’s quite unique. I can think of no other country that is consistently calling on an ideological basis for the destruction of another member state of the United Nations. And I would add that, if you feel that a nuclear North Korea is crisis enough for the world, then a nuclear Iran, situated where it is with the size that it has, is a much more terrifying prospect. One last point I just want to make, which is — you know, in 1988, I mentioned this in my column — we sank much of the Iranian Navy pretty much in a night. And those years of tension in the Strait of Hormuz, the threats that the Iranians posed there, kind of went away. So I don’t think most people remember the day of April 18, 1988 as America’s war with Iran. It was actually the largest U.S. surface naval engagement after World War II. But we sent a decisive message to the Iranians that we were not to be toyed with. And we got better behavior for about a dozen years from that regime.

michelle goldberg

It seems to me that everything that supporters of the Iran deal predicted would happen, if Trump pulled out and ratcheted up the pressure, is now happening— right, that the moderate forces, or the relatively moderate forces in Iran, the forces that do want a deal with the United States, have been weakened and discredited, because they made this deal at some political cost internally. And they abided by it. You might think that the deal itself was insufficient. But by all accounts, they abided by the letter of the law. The United States then just kind of unilaterally ripped it up— and at the same time, seems to think that it can demand that Iran continue to abide by a deal that it will no longer honor. You know, the Wall Street Journal, just the other day, had an article about how this sanctions regime, while it is kind of crushing ordinary Iranians, has actually strengthened the Iranian Revolutionary forces. It strengthened them both politically, because everything that kind of hardliners would say against making a deal with the perfidious United States has now been borne out. It’s also strengthening them economically, because they control the smuggling trade, which is ever more important as sanctions kick in. And the fact that sinking the Navy didn’t cause war with Iran in 1988, I don’t think that that means that we should just roll the dice and see what will happen this time. Particularly from Iran’s point of view, we here in this room are Americans who spend a lot of time trying to parse what’s going on in our own country and sort of marinating in American politics, and none of us have any idea what this government wants to do with regards to Iran.

david leonhardt

Our government.

michelle goldberg

Right, our government. So the Iranians have to be even more in the dark. They do know that we have a national security advisor. Contrary to what you just said, Bret, that no other country calls for the destruction of other member nations of the U.N.— well, John Bolton calls for the destruction of the Iranian regime and sort of jeers at them and says, you know, you’re not going to be around next year. I think we know to some extent that Trump isn’t entirely on board with Bolton. I’m not sure how much the Iranians should know that. They’ve seen what happens when countries are maximally aggressive towards the United States under this administration. The administration backs down. They’ve also seen what happens when countries show any sort of weakness. This administration walks all over them. And so it is rational for them to behave in this really appalling way. I don’t see any justification for what we’re doing, except to provoke the war that some people, at least inside the administration, want.

bret stephens

Well, I think your premise is mistaken, if I may say. One of the problems with Obama’s Iran deal, which was never a treaty — it was a kind of an agreement — was that it lifted sanctions and provided huge economic relief for the regime. They did not use that relief for the sake of improving the standard of living of ordinary Iranians. They used it to fund Hezbollah, to fund their efforts in Syria, one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time. The deal helped fuel their regional aggression. And among other things, because the I.R.G.C. has always had the commanding heights of the Iranian economy, it was the I.R.G.C. that was one of the principal beneficiaries of the Iran deal. Now, to some extent, you’re right of course. When there’s more pressure, people who have power are going to be able to control smuggling routes. But we had some excellent reporting from Ben Hubbard, in Beirut, about the economic pressure that, for example, Hezbollah has been under, because Iran is just simply not able to provide them with the kind of munificence that previously had funded many of their efforts. Hezbollah still makes money through drug smuggling and other methods. But they’ve been under pressure. Other Iranian proxies have also been under pressure. That was a concrete benefit from no longer providing or applying economic pressure on the Iranians. I think the Iranian regime is a pretty careful calculator of costs and benefits. And it’s above all interested in sustaining its grip on power. That’s really the end game for them. They’ve got a huge population that is very young, that is very hungry, that is connected in all kinds of ways — in the way that North Koreans, for example, are not — to the west. And they’re afraid of that population. They saw it rise up in 2009 during the so-called Green Revolution. One of the most interesting slogans that you’ve seen on Iranian streets during recent protests or about a year ago — stop giving money for Palestine, give money to us. So they are aware of how susceptible they are to that pressure. I do not think that they are going to be so foolish as to, for instance, try to sink and attack American assets. But they’re going to try to conduct this sort of ambiguous warfare.

ross douthat

Can I just ask what you think the Iranians want us to do in response to these pinprick aggressions against non-U.S. shipping and so on?

bret stephens

Well, they probably want to stampede the Europeans into trying to make concessions.

david leonhardt

And how do they think that the sort of aggressions they’re showing will lead the Europeans to fold?

bret stephens

The Europeans are acutely conscious of economic instability in the Middle East. And they hope that the Europeans will apply pressure on the United States. I don’t think that’s going to be a very successful strategy, given the state of our relations with our European partners.

david leonhardt

The way all this has gone, I will confess, has made me question the Obama deal more than I did before. And I understand, Michelle, you’re skeptical of that— because the Obama deal basically said we are willing to accept a version of Iran that we have that does all these terrible things in the Middle East with Hezbollah in exchange for an Iran that is less likely to be nuclear. I think that’s one area where we probably won’t have common ground, Bret. I do think the Obama deal — and Michelle, I assume you do too — I do think it made it less likely that Iran would be nuclear. As I’ve seen all this happen, I sort of feel like, wow, maybe the Obama administration could have been tougher. I still don’t see particularly how this ends well. And I think that’s a version of your question, Ross, which is given that we’ve got Trump managing it, given the chaos, given as Michelle has pointed out all the ways in which he rewards bellicosity, I have a really hard time seeing how this Trump approach ends well.

michelle goldberg

The debate about the Obama deal is whether they could have gotten something better, right? It’s not whether the United States got everything that it wanted or whether the deal kind of completely succeeded, or even sought to succeed, neutralizing Iranian aggression on all of these other fronts that weren’t nuclear. But to me, the fundamental question is, could it have been better? Was it worth making these concessions to put off a possible nuclear program until 10 years in the future. And we’re not going to see a counterfactual. But as close as we can to seeing a counterfactual, what happens when you pull out of that deal? It’s not Iran buckling. It’s not, you know, an outbreak of a new iteration of the Green Revolution. It’s the hardliners gaining power. It’s Iran becoming more aggressive, and it’s Iran restarting nuclear production. Is that Trump gets rolled by Iran, the way he was rolled by North Korea, makes some sort of simulacrum of the Iran deal, calls it the “Make America Great Iran Deal,” and basically says mission accomplished. And Iran sort of goes on as normal. And when we have a real president, they deal with the threat of a nuclear armed Iran.

ross douthat

Don’t you think that’s kind of plausible, Bret?

bret stephens

Yeah. Look, it is, in fact. And I alluded to it in my column. I mean, that may be what the Iranians are playing at, which is the Kim Jong-un strategy— create a crisis and have Trump check himself and say, oh gee, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m going to go to wherever it is — Azerbaijan or something, meet with Khomeini, and claimed that I’ve solved this. And so this has always been a profound reservation I’ve had with this. I do want to say something with respect to a comment that Michelle made. Let’s just not forget that while the purpose of diplomacy is to keep Iran is far from nuclear capability as possible. When people say that they hope the Iranian regime falls, it’s a call that I think most people should join them in. I’m not saying it should fall by force of American arms. But certainly if it’s by a dint of American economic and moral suasion, that’d be a very good thing. This is a regime that hangs gay people from cranes. This is a regime where the most inspiring, as far as I’m concerned, Me Too movement in the world is taking place— those Iranian women removing their chadors — and waving them at great peril to themselves in the streets. This is a uniquely vile regime that has supported Bashar al-Assad from day one. And it’s a regime that calls not for the elimination of the Israeli regime, but for the elimination of Israel itself. So we should all look forward to a day when the Iranians use whatever tools are at their disposal to get rid of an oppressive state.

michelle goldberg

Of course, it will be wonderful the day that the Iranians rise up and overthrow the mullahs. You don’t see any support among Iranian liberals for John Bolton or for this policy. They don’t think that this policy of maximum aggression is helping their cause.

bret stephens

Well, I don’t think we are going to facilitate the end of the regime in whatever form by giving it the two things that it wants most. One is unimpeded access to the global economy in terms of its oil sales, in terms of its relationship with other countries— economic relationship — while at the same time saying you can continue to behave however you want throughout the region and, in 15 years, we’re going to lift nearly all the restrictions that previously applied in terms of the amount of uranium you enrich, your plutonium facilities, and so forth and so on. That simply opens up all the doors for them. So I’m just not persuaded that a strategy that relaxes most of the pressure is going to do anything to hasten the day when the mullahs fall, as at some point I suspect they will. On the contrary, it’s going to strengthen their position in the region. You already have — people used to talk about the Shiite crescent stretching from Tehran through Baghdad through Damascus and the Bekaa Valley — that’s becoming a reality, because we relaxed pressure, not because we applied it. You know, George Packer just wrote this book about Richard Holbrooke. And I mean, Holbrooke was a complicated figure. But we should remember there was a time when American policy of diplomatic and military pressure against noxious dictators did achieve hugely positive results. Now, whether the Trump administration has the bandwidth or capacity to do that, I think is a question all of us wrestle with.

ross douthat

Right. I mean, you don’t think they do though, right? I mean, really, I agree. There are certainly moments where U.S. military pressure and diplomacy applied together have reaped good results. But we haven’t had a lot of those moments in the Middle East over the last 15 years, across some very different administrations, with major regime change campaigns from the Bush administration and the Obama administrations. These have all worked out badly. And I will go with you as far as saying there’s a pretty good case for pulling out of the Iran deal. But I just don’t see how you get from there to let’s get into an escalatory spiral with a regime that really can’t hurt us dramatically right now, if we don’t get in some weird escalation with them.

bret stephens

You know, back in 1994, President Clinton announced a deal with North Korea, which he said was going to permanently put a nuclear North Korea out of reach. And that didn’t turn out well. So sometimes inaction or deals that sort of just buy you time aren’t a great idea. I think a nuclear Iran would be a far larger catastrophe than a nuclear North Korea. And unfortunately, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go into the world with the administration you have. And that’s what we’re dealing with now. I wish it were a different one.

david leonhardt

Let’s end here, Bret. What are you looking for now? What do you think are the important things to keep an eye on in terms of figuring out where this story is going to go?

bret stephens

I’m interested to see what the Iranians are going to do next— if they’re going to continue to tax, shipping. It’ll be interesting to see just what the Trump administration chooses to do. My advice was, step one, change the rules of engagement, so they can’t harass ships this way. Whether they take it or not, I have no idea, but I think that would be a good first step.

david leonhardt

O.K. Bret Stephens, thanks for joining us again.

bret stephens

Thanks for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING]

david leonhardt

Conservative writers have been engaged in a kind of civil war lately. It’s a fight about whether conservatives have been too nice, too accommodating to liberal pluralism and tolerance. A writer, named Sohrab Ahmari, started this debate with a piece taking on his fellow conservatives, especially one named David French. And Ahmari’s central example of liberal pluralism was Drag Queen Story Hour, in which drag queens read stories to children at public libraries. Since then, many other conservatives and liberals have jumped into the fight, including Ross and Michelle. At stake, it seems, is the future of conservatism. We’re going to hash that out right now. So Michelle, how do we make sense of this whole fight.

michelle goldberg

Well, I think Ross will probably disagree with me. But to me, the fight seems to be about whether or not conservatives can continue to tolerate a society in which they don’t rule. It’s interesting that this whole thing started with Sohrab Ahmari throwing a tantrum over the existence of Drag Queen Story Hour— which, from my point of view, is this nice event that takes people who used to be marginalized, brings them into the community to help parents entertain their kids. But what’s telling about it is not that I expect Ahmari to approve of it, but it’s that there really are situations that we can talk about in which there is a conflict between liberal notions of equality and religious exercise. But this isn’t one of them. This is just a community event that Ahmari is angry that he can’t ban. And to me, it kind of reveals that what they’re demanding, once again, is primacy in public life that they feel like they deserve and have been denied. And having been denied it, they’re sort of ready to give up on the whole experiment of American liberal democracy.

david leonhardt

So Ross, are you giving up on America?

ross douthat

I never give up on America, David, never.

michelle goldberg

[LAUGHS]

ross douthat

We had a episode a few weeks ago that was about socialism. And one of the questions that came up in that episode was, are the new socialists really socialists in a sort of “Marxist, seize the means of production, overthrow liberalism” style?

david leonhardt

Heighten the contradictions.

ross douthat

Heighten contradictions. Or do they just want basically Denmark? And I think that question also hangs over a lot of these debates about what gets called post-liberalism on the right, because I think fundamentally what’s going on are two things. One, you have a bunch of religious conservatives who made a lot of compromises in supporting Donald Trump — or who didn’t make those compromises and are now trying to decide whether to support him for re-election in the case of Ahmari, who was against Trump in 2016. And so they’re thinking through justifications for essentially supporting a very unpleasant figure. And one of those justifications is this sense that political liberalism has become so hostile to conservative Christianity that you have to make deals with Donald Trump. So that’s the one thing that’s going on. And that’s a big part, I think, of the Ahmari versus David French fight, because David French is this sort of avatar of a very intense religious conservatism. French is as pro-life as anyone and so on, literally has spent a career litigating on behalf of religious conservatives, but is extremely anti-Trump. So Trump looms over this, but then so does this debate about what is the Republican Party. Right? Is it a coalition dominated by libertarians who want to cut taxes, in which religious conservatives are sort of a junior partner who get judicial appointees who are supposed to overturn Roe v. Wade, but never do. Or should it become a coalition that looks a little more like a populist, socially conservative party, that spends a little more energy on sort of non-libertarian causes, supporting two-parent families and so on, while remaining socially conservative. And I think there’s this part of the socially conservative intelligentsia that looks at the situation they’re in and says, O.K., we’ve lost a lot of battles in the wider culture, but we’re still really influential in the Republican Party. Right. Like, we supply most of the votes for the Republican Party. Why are we letting the libertarian wing dictate policy? And so that’s another big part of this. It’s almost a power play going on, where social conservatives are saying, even in our reduced state, we should be in charge of the conservative coalition and we’re going to act like we are. In that sense, they’re sort of rejecting this old libertarian fusionism thing.

michelle goldberg

But in what sense are social conservatives not in charge of the coalition? I mean, Donald Trump certainly— I can’t think of anything, I mean, besides being a personally decent, respectable human being. In terms of policy, what does this movement want that he hasn’t given them?

ross douthat

I would say two things. First, part of it wants more influence over economic policy-making. So like, when the one legislative thing that Trump —

david leonhardt

They want more socialism.

ross douthat

They want more socialism. In a sense, they want more pro-family socialism — or some do. I mean, look, I may be overstating this — because to be honest, this is what I want. But I think if you look at the debates over the Republican tax bill, which was the only big economic legislation Trump has passed, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee and a few other people wanted the tax bill to be more pro-family. And the rest of the Republican coalition wanted it to be more pro-business. And for the most part, the pro-business side won. And there are a lot of social conservatives saying, well, why did that happen and why should it happen. And then relatedly, there are other issues, like should the Republican Party become an anti-trust party and go after Silicon Valley. And the sense of Silicon Valley is this bastion of cultural liberalism is now encouraging social conservatives to flirt with anti-trust ideas. That’s the economic side of this. Go ahead, Michelle.

michelle goldberg

No. I mean, I just think that you’re making this seem much more benign than it is, because—

ross douthat

Well, that’s why I’m here.

michelle goldberg

Because there’s nothing in this Ahmari essay, that kicked this whole thing off, about antitrust, about the problem with tax policy. It’s about taking people, like me and my family and everyone I love, and crushing us into the ground. And I’m going to read this. This is pretty early on in the piece. He says, “The only way is through. That is, to say, to fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square reordered to the common good and ultimately the highest good.” And he makes it pretty clear that the enemy is people like me, who would consider taking our children to Drag Queen Story Hour. And it seems like he sort of made these like vague chest-beating threats. And then when people have asked him what it would it really mean to destroy the enemy, then he sort of backed off and said, no, we just want it —

ross douthat

Right. Well, I guess that’s what I meant though with the socialism analogy. Right. Like, I feel like if you read Jacobin, there’s sort of chest beating about seizing the means of production sometimes, followed by backing towards “oh, we just want Danish social democracy.” And I think something similar is happening here. There is a tendency that’s encouraged by a certain kind of very online conservative Christian, and especially Catholic, towards this chest thumping about the corruptions of liberal pluralism writ large. It is equally telling that when you push Sohrab, well, what does this mean, he backs off a bit. I mean, I think there is a bigger question here, which is that the weird thing about the culture wars right now— maybe this is always true— is that both sides see the other side as like planning to crush them. Right. So Sohrab isn’t just reacting to the Drag Queen Story Hour. He’s reacting to the sense that in the new liberal culture, you get Drag Queen Story Hours. And if you’re an evangelical florist who doesn’t want to do flowers for a same sex wedding, you get fined and driven out of business. And the argument among religious conservatives is that there isn’t a neutral public square, because the quote that you read is also how liberals are thinking. Liberals want a public square oriented to the highest good. And that means corporate sponsored Pride Week as like the liturgy of our society.

david leonhardt

But I think there is going to be an enduring issue here for conservatives. So some other writers have made a version of this point. When you think about what African-Americans have endured while still remaining patriotic loyal Americans, it is remarkable. When you think about the fact that atheists in this country, of whom I am one, literally cannot pledge allegiance to this country without also pledging allegiance to god— that’s not allowed in school. I want to pledge allegiance to this country without pledging allegiance to god, but I don’t withdraw or try to fight some big war. I accept that I live in a democracy and I’m going to have to accept some things that I don’t like with some things that I do. And so I think when you think about how progressive and pluralist younger people are, I think we’re going to see a version of this again and again for conservatives— where they’re going to have to decide, hey, can I just say, you know what, I don’t want to go to Drag Queen Story Hour. Hey, I’m straight. I don’t want to marry someone of the same sex as me.

michelle goldberg

I want to go to straight pride week. (LAUGHS)

david leonhardt

Without withdrawing from a society that says, hey, you know what, we’re going to have same sex marriage.

ross douthat

Sure. And this is the David French argument. David French’s argument, and his response basically to Sohrab Ahmari, is that it’s totally possible to have a pluralist society that defends both the religious liberties of conservative Christians and the rights of communities to have Drag Queen Story Hour. And that’s a totally plausible argument. I think a lot of serious conservative Christians believe it. At the same time, I think a lot of conservative Christians listen to what you say and say, well, that was the pitch for same sex marriage. But then in practice, it turns out that alongside this new definition of marriage and so on, there are new rules that make it hard for the Catholic church to run adoption agencies. And the A.C.L.U. now thinks that Catholic hospitals should close or have to perform abortions. And there is a way in which it is hard — a neutral public square is a hard thing to sustain. I don’t think anyone on either side is crazy to see it as something that can easily just sort of shove your side out in ways that have institutional repercussions and that go well beyond just, you know, you don’t have to marry a guy if you don’t like gay marriage.

michelle goldberg

So part of what we’re arguing about — when Adam Serwer wrote this response to your piece and you wrote this response to him, and I think his argument, which is similar to mine, is that this is all about conservatives feeling victimized, because they no longer rule. And then you countered, no, here are the reasons that they feel disenfranchised and victimized. And as I read it, I thought, yeah, because they no longer rule. Right. You’re saying that people are trying to say that evangelical businesses don’t have the right to discriminate against gay people, that government-funded services run by Catholics have to treat all people equally, that Catholic hospitals should provide a full range of medical services. And so the argument, it seems to me, is Catholicism or is Orthodox Christianity oppressed if they are not allowed to discriminate?

ross douthat

And the answer can be yes in certain circumstances if religious doctrine requires something that liberalism defines as discrimination. So for instance, this does not exist at the moment, but you could imagine a world in which liberalism evolved to a point where it felt that Catholic home schooling should become illegal. What if you are a Catholic kid who is gay or transgender and you have parents who are teaching you a doctrine that liberal society considers both unscientific and immoral? I mean, I think the arguments you’ve just made — they’re plausible arguments, right. They’re plausible arguments within the liberal framework. But this is my point — that there are often plausible arguments within the liberal framework for doing things that, from a perspective that’s internal to a particular tradition, pushes you to the margins. Right. I mean within the liberal order, we basically— the United States government— changed Mormon teaching on polygamy in the 19th century by basically saying you have to change this in order to be part of America. And I think a lot of liberals— I don’t think they’d express it this way. But I think they sort of think that’s what will happen with conservative Christians— that opposition to same sex marriage, maybe opposition to abortion, are kind of like Mormon polygamy. They’re this sort of relic of a barbarous past that with the right gentle pressure — we’re not going to arrest anybody, but with some rules and regulations — eventually Catholics and will see the light like Mormons did.

michelle goldberg

I don’t think everybody thinks that. I mean, I’ve never met anyone who thinks that. And I’m a pretty representative social liberal. I’m not sure that liberals, who are thinking about nondiscrimination, are really thinking too much at all about what happens internally in their religions. They’re thinking about much more public facing questions, like should an adoption agency be allowed to refuse to place children with gay couples, with Jewish couples, with Muslim couples. And unlike your example, that’s not theoretical. That’s happening right now, and the Trump administration wants to allow that to happen more. And again, what seems so irreconcilable here is that I don’t think liberals or secularists — they don’t necessarily care about changing the internal dynamics of these religions. What they care about is allowing the rules of these religions to impinge on others. And it keeps coming back to the idea that a lot of social conservatives feel that if they can’t impose those rules on others, then they are being discriminated against.

david leonhardt

I’ll be honest. I do think that discrimination against L.G.B.T. people is likely to fade over time. Ross, that is my bet. Over time, the same way we think of laws against interracial marriage as being ludicrous today, in the future, many more people will think of them that way. So I am making that bet that certain parts of religious conservatism will decline over time and become more marginalized. But I guess I would say two things. I don’t feel that way about all religious conservatism. We’ve talked about abortion. I don’t think abortion is inexorably going in one direction. And so I think political compromises that respect different things in that realm are more likely to have to endure. And two, I don’t have any need to impose my view of same sex marriage on the entire country immediately. I guess what I would ask is that don’t take social change in a direction you don’t like — and I don’t mean you, Ross, here. But don’t take social change in direction you don’t like as a sign that you need to rip up the deal with all of society, because women and people who aren’t white and people who aren’t Christian have been spent many decades and centuries basically saying, hey, I’m willing to accept an America that isn’t the America I want. And I’m willing to do it for my entire life

ross douthat

One of the points I was trying to make in my response to Adam Serwer was that the narrative that a lot of liberals have right now — that is religious conservatives used to run America and now they don’t — isn’t really accurate at all if you look at like who religious conservatives are. And we’ll set aside evangelicals and Mormons and Jews, and just talk about my own Catholic church. Catholics, in the United States, have had exactly the experience that you described.

david leonhardt

Totally. Absolutely.

ross douthat

For hundreds of years, there was a sense pretty clearly that Catholics were second-class citizens. There were mild, but occasional, spasms of anti-Catholic violence. There was a whole Protestant anti-Catholic narrative. And the promise of American life in the 20th century was that if Catholics made their peace with exactly this liberal pluralism that we’re talking about, and abandoned some of the 19th century Catholic critiques of liberal democracy, that America would make a place for them and Catholicism would continue to thrive in the US.

michelle goldberg

And you don’t think that’s true that that’s happened?

ross douthat

I think that that was basically the deal for what is now sort of, in hindsight, this brief window of immense Catholic flourishing in the U.S. — let’s call it the early 20th century through the early 1960s. And I think since then, the turn that liberalism has taken, secular liberalism, around a whole range of issues, starting with abortion and sort of moving through the debates around the sexual revolution, have essentially rewritten the bargain that Catholics made to become full Americans. I agree with you. I don’t think that rewriting is at all grounds for tearing up the deal or anything like that, which is why I’m not making that kind of argument here. I’m making an argument though that when something like that happens, you shouldn’t be surprised that it provokes anxiety, uncertainty, and a lot of weird debates and experiments. And this happens in other marginalized communities too, right? Like African-Americans have been immensely patriotic, but African-Americans have for good reason also considered and embraced forms of black nationalism and black separatism and critiques of liberal democracy. And the Catholic relationship to liberal democracy, beyond the US, is really, really complicated and includes a lot of violence and persecution on both sides. And I think that that framework helps— you know, Ahmari is Catholic and David French is Protestant. And you can tell at least part of the story just in that division.

david leonhardt

It feels fair to give you the last word here, Ross. So on our show page, we have posted not only Michelle’s columns on this and Ross’s columns on this, but also the outside columns that we have mentioned here. And if you want to dig in further, there is much more to dig into. And now it is time for our weekly recommendation. Ross, this week is your turn. What do you have?

ross douthat

I’m— I’m going to recommend the Bible, David.

david leonhardt

(LAUGHS)

ross douthat

I’m going to recommend — no, seriously, this is completely on-brand. And it will maybe only be of interest to a segment of our listeners. But I’m the parent of young children. And one of the things you do when you are a religious reactionary like myself is try and find versions of the Bible for young people that are good and interesting, and aren’t either sort of treacly or pompous, basically. And when I was a kid, there was a version called the picture Bible that was basically a thick, like, Bible-sized comic book of the Bible. And I sort of cycled through a bunch of other options for our kids, and I’ve ended up back at the picture Bible. And I would recommend it both to, you know, serious Christians, but also to people who want their kids to have some biblical literacy with a version of the Bible that I don’t think pushes a particular theological agenda and just makes, especially the Old Testament, seem like what it really is, which is like a really good political read with a lot of kings and battles and adultery. I mean, it’s tame. It’s not too explicit. But anyway, I was sort of surprised to come back to this older Bible for kids that turned out to be still really good. And I don’t think it takes any clear positions on the culture wars of our time, so I can recommend it to an ecumenical audience.

david leonhardt

What’s the rough age target of the picture Bible?

ross douthat

I’d say about eight to 12.

david leonhardt

Given my sort of shocking lack of biblical knowledge, it may actually be the right target —

michelle goldberg

So he’s recommending it for David.

ross douthat

I actually— no, I will say honestly that for all that I pose as this really serious religious person, most of my biblical knowledge comes from the picture Bible. And so things that weren’t included in it that are left on the cutting room floor, I sometimes don’t remember at all. So for better or worse, it made me the biblical expert that I am today.

michelle goldberg

O.K. So let me tell you why this would ruin my life, is because—

ross douthat

[LAUGHS] I read to my kids a lot. My son especially is really into Greek mythology. And so I read him a lot of Greek mythology comic books and Greek mythology for kids. And one thing he always asks me to do before he goes to bed is to make up a story. Right. And usually the story is supposed to include like some superheroes and some Greek gods, because he didn’t really know the difference. Right. So I have to tell a story about Zeus, Spider Man, Athena, and Harry Potter. And it is exhausting. And if I had to add a whole bunch of like biblical characters into this sort of mash-up, I think it would be very hard on everyone.

david leonhardt

And we can order the picture Bible on Amazon? We liberals haven’t banned it yet?

ross douthat

Yes, you totally can. It has to be stamped by Hobby Lobby and endorsed by— no. It’s on Amazon.

michelle goldberg

[LAUGHS]

david leonhardt

Excellent. So again, Ross, what’s the recommendation?

ross douthat

It is still, 30 years later, the picture Bible for the eight-year-old interested in the Book of Kings in your life.

david leonhardt