The American Crisis of Conscience

Around two months ago, the Hobby Lobby decision was on the front page of every paper, and not a few left-leaning politicians were vowing to change or even repeal the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Senator Chuck Schumer of New York—who originally introduced RFRA two decades ago in the House of Representatives—argued that, because corporations’ “very purpose is to profit from the open market,” they do not have consciences worthy of protection (if he even believes they should have them in the first place).

Although we can take Schumer at his word that RFRA was not initially intended to provide religious conscience rights to corporations, we should certainly not therefore conclude that his narrow interpretation (that corporations are solely concerned with profit) is one worth sharing. The financial bottom line, in the end, is a low (pun intended) standard for success. Companies should be encouraged to set aside the pursuit of profit (not to be confused with a healthy regard for financial sustainability) for the sake of the common good.

Democrats are not entirely blind to that fact: in the past month, Congressional Democrats have been railing against the practice of “inversion”—a method by which corporations re-incorporate overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes (most recently exemplified in Burger King’s negotiations with the Canadian food chain Tim Horton’s). The ideological justification for these Democrats’ proposed policy measures is “economic patriotism”—a term that emerged in 2012 and that at least one strategist thinks could be central to Democratic political strategy in the upcoming election.

You read that correctly—only a few weeks after arguing that even closely held corporations should just worry about profits and have no higher loyalties, Democratic strategists are trying to argue that massive, faceless corporations should be moved by patriotic fervor. The only way to render these two positions consistent is to suggest that a corporation should have a conscience only to the extent that it leads them to do what the State wants them to do; the only religion a corporation may have is the civil religion.

Somehow, I don’t think that such a blatantly self-serving argument is going to make its way into the Democratic Party platform anytime soon; it’s far more likely that they don’t even notice the contradiction. The contradictory arguments about corporate consciences arise from the fact that, in modern politics, arguments are submitted for evaluation to the calculator rather than the conscience.

If an idea is considered for its ability to serve as a talking point to help the party come out ahead in the next election, it might result in a proposed policy—like repealing RFRA or restricting corporate inversion—which will get a few hours of coverage on a cable news channel but that may or may not actually result in a new law. The argument exists for the sake of that debate and that debate alone. If an idea is considered for its objective truth value, on the other hand, it may have actual consequences. An idea, once accepted as true by the conscience, can affect every part of a person’s moral outlook.

That, after all, is what conscience is: not Jiminy Cricket on the shoulder, but the capacity to examine propositions in the context of moral truth. A new proposition is held up against already-accepted ones and judged in the light of a person’s deepest moral convictions; if they cannot be reconciled, they cannot both remain. If the members of the Democratic Party had used their consciences to develop an approach to conscientious economics, then the Democratic platform would be a bit more consistent. But they did not use their consciences properly in the formation of their arguments, and so their arguments on the role of the conscience are plainly deficient.

That said, the Republican Party’s conscientiousness in pushing for conscience rights has been similarly deficient. In fact, it seems that Republicans are barely interested enough in conscience rights to give even occasional lip service to the subject. The fact that it took a Supreme Court decision to protect Hobby Lobby from an executive order is an indictment against both the Republican-controlled House that took no action and the Republican establishment that didn’t even seem to notice at all. Similarly, to the extent that those on the Right have even noticed calls for “economic patriotism,” they have responded with nothing more interesting or creative than boilerplate comparisons of Obama to fascists and communists.

If Republicans have neglected to defend the consciences of Americans, they have also neglected those facing far graver persecutions for following their consciences. Consider Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig’s recent essay, in which she points out that even when the conservative media has discussed religious persecution by ISIS in Iraq, their coverage seems more motivated by a desire to criticize Obama than by a desire to draw attention to the plight of Iraqi religious minorities. Given the sheer amount of air time dedicated to scoring political points off of either Obama’s “junior varsity” comment or his playing golf as these events have unfolded, it’s unclear which side is treating the situation in Iraq more like a game.

Lest I seem to make a hypocrite of myself in spending more time scoring points than making points, let me suggest we turn our individual and collective gazes inward. If we do not use our consciences well, can we really expect our politicians to understand them? And if those politicians do not understand our consciences, how can they possibly respect them? If these contradictions in the parties’ arguments are so obvious to us, how many contradictions in our own ways of thinking might be exposed if we were scrutinized as thoroughly?

Finally, if we do not ask these policy questions—whether on our responsibilities to Iraqis and to all persecuted people or on the moral obligations of corporations toward workers and the state—of ourselves, how can we demand that others answer them?