Jonathon Rauch's Innumeracy

Atlantic Monthly's Jonathan Rauch (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200501/rauch) appears to struggle with basic arithmetic.

“On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics. The same is true of the left. The clashes over civil rights and Vietnam turned into street warfare partly because activists were locked out of their own party establishments and had to fight, literally, to be heard. When Michael Moore receives a hero’s welcome at the Democratic National Convention, we moderates grumble; but if the parties engage fierce activists while marginalizing tame centrists, that is probably better for the social peace than the other way around.”

This seems to be a peculiar sort of innumeracy. "Religious conservatives", by Mr. Rauch's definition, make up about half the modern Republican party.... or more. Their influence is not proportional to their willingness to do violence as a disgruntled minority (or it would be exceedingly small, since only the very crazy few are violent.... and they are by definition not really "religious conservatives," anyway). Instead, the influence of "religious conservatives" is proportional to their numbers, i.e., a majority of the party, or something very close to it.

"Religious conservatives" did not attain their influence through marches (though some have marched, in both the civil rights and pro-life movements). Nor was power gained by intimidation, the promotion of any kind of violence, or any other sort of "acting out." Mr. Rauch seems to assume some kind of proportionality of the number of (presumably conservative right) potential abortion clinic bombers to (presumably liberal left) street fighting war protesters of bygone years.... some of whom are back.

Hmm... if this proportionality were true, few abortion clinics would have been left standing in America even before the 1994 Republican congressional victories, after 20 years of having been mostly "ignored" by both parties.

Some leftists will paint pro-life demonstrators with the same brush as the 1960's anti-war activists... as if there were some moral or tactical parity. The fact seems to be that main-stream media have given mostly negative coverage to pro-life "protest", while positive media coverage of the perspectives of anti-war activists is a large part of what led to their (execrable) successes.

Mr. Rauch tries a real fast one in his commingling of civil rights protests with anti-war protests. The former had a high proportion of "religious conservatives" and were virtually non-violent on the part of the protesters (in no small part *because* of religious belief), while the latter emanated largely from the left, clearly used violence and provocation of it as a tool, and were part of the early "culture wars."

The comparison of the influence of "religous conservatives" in the Republican party to Michael Moore's reception at the Democratic convention is *exactly* backwards. In contrast to "moderate Democrats" grumbling about (extreme leftist) Moore, it was Republican conservatives grumbling about the lionizing of "Republican moderates" at the Republican convention.

Mr. Rauch can't count, apparently. He also doesn't appreciate the fundamental position of people who believe in something as quaint as right and wrong... namely that they are unwilling to do wrong in order to achieve what is right.