One of the founding principles of the United States is a clear separation between church and state. This kind of secularism was a huge break-through in government at a time when most European countries had fairly significant roles for the church in government. Much of the early motivation for the principle of secularism in the US can be traced back to the desire to escape the intolerance and prosecution that so frequently resulted in Europe from the influence of the church on rulers. I am therefore relieved that we will shortly again have a president who appears to clearly understand that no matter what his personal faith, the decisions of government should be motivated not by religious believes but be based on evidence and science.
But just having a president who understands this is not enough. Instead, I believe we need a second secularism, this time separating commerce and state. Sunday’s NYT had a great OpEd piece that described how the enforcement position at the SEC had essentially become a launching pad for careers on Wall Street. The point was that folks who look at the SEC as a gateway to industry are unlikely to be effective regulators. Similarly, making a consummate Wall Street insider, such as Hank Paulson, the head of the Treasury has not resulted in a lot of clear thinking about the financial crisis. That does not even start to describe the extensive role now played by lobbyists and industry directly in shaping legislation and regulations. In essence, we have reverted to a situation in which government is no longer based on evidence and science, but on ulterior motives (this time commercial and profit motives rather than religious believes).
Obama is taking a step in the right direction with his premise of making government “cool” again as a career path for bright young folks. He has also appointed a number of scientists to important positions. But I hope that the depth of this crisis will give him an opportunity to rally folks behind deeper structural changes to dramatically reduce the influence of profit motives on government. My preferred solution here would be forced transparency – for instance all legislation should be version controlled with changes clearly attributed to the person(s) who made the change. I believe that only with a second secularism will we get the profound changes to education, environment and health care policy required to address the challenges that we face.
