“Is this conservatism [of doubt] philosophically strong enough to endure? Rich Lowry of National Review recently argued that it is not: ‘The secularist view misses that freedom is grounded in truths, in the God-given dignity of man as a rational creature and in our fundamental equality. This is why the pope could say, “God created us to be free.” If the idea of freedom is detached from these truths, it has no secure ground, because the strong will inevitably attempt to dominate the weak unless checked by moral truths (see slavery or segregation or communism).’ Without Christianity, Lowry argues, the rights of the individual will be trampled. But what if Lowry’s fellow citizen is an atheist? How can the atheist be persuaded to consent to truths that are only solidly grounded in a faith he doesn’t share? And what happens when even those who share the same faith disagree profoundly on its moral and political consequences? Lowry seems to forget that men of Christian faith strongly opposed and backed slavery and segregation—and used Biblical texts to do so.

“The defense of human freedom offered by conservatives of doubt, on the other hand, is founded on more accessible and less contentious arguments. Such conservatives can point to the Constitution itself as the basis of U.S. political life, and its Enlightenment concept of freedom as sturdy enough without extra-Constitutional theology. . . . They can point to the astonishing success and durability of the U.S. experiment to buttress the notion that the Constitution is a much more stable defense of human equality than that inherent in any religion. The Constitution itself has far wider support among citizens than any theological argument. To put it another way: You don’t need an actual religion when you already have a workable civil version in place” (emphasis in original).

Lowry had pointed out that the campaigns against slavery and segregation had a religious character. How would a conservative of doubt, who doesn’t believe in moral truth but sees some unexplained obligation to the Constitution, have responded to those evils? The conservative of doubt in the 1850s couldn’t have pointed to the Constitution to condemn slavery, since the Constitution allowed it. The conservative of doubt in 1952 could have pointed to the Fourteenth Amendment—but there were plenty of people making the case that the amendment was compatible with segregation (and the courts agreed). If noting disagreement among Christians on matters of moral import is a decisive objection to Lowry, then disagreement among people who claim to support the Constitution must be a decisive objection to Sullivan as well. The arguments against slavery and segregation could never have been made except by people who believed that moral truth was accessible to the human mind.