Philosophical unity

Orthodox Jewish commentator David Klinghoffer explains what "In God We Trust" means to readers of the Los Angeles Times:

Many of the citizens who dislike the president's stance on values, including some churchgoers, respect the morality of, let's say, the Ten Commandments. But they leave open the possibility of subjecting moral truth to the criterion of their own opinion. When the president's admirers — Jews, Christians and others — say they care about "moral values," they mean the objectivity of values in principle.

Actually, there's one commandment that moral subjectivists don't respect — Commandment No. 1: "I am the Lord your God" (Exodus 20:2). It functions as preamble to what will follow, explaining why we need to abide by the remaining nine: because it is "the Lord your God" who sanctions them. Most Americans — you might call them the First Commandment Alliance — affirm God's role in establishing right and wrong. That alliance includes those Jews, Christians and members of other faiths who see the question of morality and its source as the president does. It even includes nonreligious folk who, if unsure about God, still think that morality has an objective basis, perhaps in nature.

Klinghoffer has a point. The left does not champion immorality as such, but by making answers to big questions subjective rather than objective, progressives built a house on sand.

People tend to think only conservatives are dogmatic. In fact, both left and right enjoy dogmatic certainty, but the left grounds that certainty in reason, and the Christian right grounds that certainty in Revelation, by saying, in effect, that establishing what's right is above our pay grade (but that's okay, because it's already been done by the Author of all life).

And while agnostics scoff at traditionalist views of "pie in the sky by and by," they're snookered by their own failure to recognize that we humans are fallen creatures who cannot save ourselves without help from God.

Moral subjectivists (relativists) have a hard time unifying with each other precisely because they're dogmatic about truth as a personal and personalized thing. "Every man for himself" is the de facto motto of relativists everywhere, and while at first glance it seems dignified, it also leads inevitably to fragmentation and special interest groups.

On the other hand, traditionalists of different faiths cooperate more readily with each other even when we disagree, because all of us affirm what Klinghoffer describes as "the objectivity of values in principle." That's a strong common bond, which gives us a metaphysical advantage in political tests of will with relativists.