WORDS.

"Have you heard about the latest shouting match on the right? Talk show hosts who spend their days attacking the left are now frothing at one of their own. They’re angry at Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News boor, for complaining that opponents of same-sex marriage “thump the Bible” too much. They say he’s insulting religion. He says there’s no real quarrel. The whole ruckus, he claims, is a “phony feud” cooked up by the left.

O’Reilly is wrong. So are his critics. In his clumsy way, he has exposed a serious weakness on the right: too much reliance on authority and too little effort to reason or connect with people. That weakness is crippling the ability of conservatives not just to persuade, but to learn.

...Reliance on sheer textual authority—not just the Bible, but the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence—is a common problem on the right. The moral power of the Bible, the Constitution, and the Declaration arises not from their proclaimed divinity but from the cogency, integrity, and resonance of their principles. When parts of the text can’t be squared with those principles—the three-fifths clause, for instance, or the instruction to kill gay men—sensible people, including believers and constitutionalists, choose the principle over the text.

What conservatism needs today is less fundamentalism about guns, drones, taxes, and gay marriage and more emphasis on the underlying objectives: freedom, order, security, family formation, fiscal responsibility, and growth. It needs fewer Limbaughs, Levins, and Deaces, and more Millmans, Douthats, and Ponnurus. It needs to stop whining about marginalization and start reclaiming the mainstream. More thinking, please. And less thumping."

SLATE: THUMPERS: Bill O’Reilly is right: Conservatives should stop thumping the Bible to justify their views on gay marriage—or anything else.