Steven Smith on "The American Proposition"

We had the honor, last Fall, of hosting Prof. Steven Smith (University of San Diego) for the annual Rice-Hasson Lecture at Notre Dame Law School.  His talk has been published in the (excellent) Church Life Journal, and you can read it here.  It's called "The American Proposition:  Whose Truths? Which Strategies" and is, obviously, inspired by John Courtney Murray's famous 1960 book, We Hold These Truths.  Here's a bit:

Murray’s interpretation of America reflected . . . a confidence that there is such a thing as truth, including moral and political truth. That humans have some capacity to discern such truth—and to reason about it. That one of those truths—the primary truth, actually—is the reality of a God who takes an interest in the affairs of human beings, including their political affairs. That even under conditions of pluralism, a human community should be based on truth—or on the community’s best efforts to discern and articulate truth. And that the relevant truth would itself prescribe not an imposed orthodoxy but rather freedom—freedom especially in matters of thought, speech, and religion. (This last point, by the way—namely, that the truth prescribes freedom—is central to a very different and important current debate that I will allude to later.)

In a condition of freedom, fallible human beings will disagree about the truth. But they can debate such questions in civil fashion. Or so Murray contended. And civilly engaging your neighbor about fundamental matters on which you disagree is not an affront or an insult; on the contrary, it is a manifestation of respect for your neighbor’s beliefs, cognitive capacities, and character. And this kind of civil engagement about truth is the basis of the American Republic. As Murray put it: “Civilization is formed by men locked together in argument.”

At the time his book appeared, there was nothing especially heterodox about his position. . . .