A Reckoning

Michael Novak

Y fellow symposiasts d rop three hines. Professor Etzioni lingers on the nce self-evident principles that underg i rd ou r rights. Regarding the

defense of liberty, Professor Smith stresses free will as a measure of the wor- thy society. And Professor Schaub notes poignant ly that ou r s tudents desper- ately want to know what it means to be Americans.

People are willing to kill us jus t for being Americans. So we ough t at least to know what being American is. Yet many of ou r s tudents have been taught painfully little abou t our nation's history, purposes , or achievements .

We are qui te lucky that at the t ime o f ou r found ing , the top, say, o n e h u n d r e d founders had unusually lively minds, in a pe r iod of ext raordinary intellectual confluences. They lived dur ing a per iod when there was a won- derful balance between reason and faith. The founders trusted reason more than some of the rhetoric of the Reformat ion r e c o m m e n d e d . At the same time, they took Jewish and Christ ian c o n c e p t i o n s o f consc ience seriously. They were u n c o m m o n l y a t tached to the Jewish Testament .

By "top one hundred" founders , I mean the eighty-six who signed e i ther the Declarat ion of I n d e p e n d e n c e or the Cons t i tu t ion , o r both , and a few others who, a l though they were not signers, were major leaders. A nice bal- ance be tween c o m m o n sense and h u m b l e faith o f f e r e d the f o u n d e r s cru- cial a r g u m e n t s in s u p p o r t o f the "self-evidence" tha t Amatai Etzioni wri tes of, self-evidence that certain inalienable rights are endowed in us by our Cre- ator.

By " c o m m o n sense," I mean that form of practical reasoning which the arguments of The Federalist addressed. By "humble faith," I mean the recog- nition a m o n g the first Americans that their communi ty ' s faith was no t the only one in the new nat ion; the re were many rel igions in America . Some principle of liberty had to be found, they saw, which would allow all these religions to thrive amicably, with free exercise on the par t o f each. They even imagined a regime not based solely on toleration of one ano the r but, as Presi- den t Washington hinted in his let ter to the H e b r e w congrega t ion of New- port, on mutual respect. We have lost that sense today, and this loss much hur ts

Michael Novak holds the George FrederickJewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Among many books by Mr. Novak is his widely read The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, first published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster. This paper is partially drawn from his 1994 Tem pleton Address at Westminster Abbey, published in full in First Thin~ (August/September 1994).

32

Etzioni, Smith, Schaub, and Novak 33

the cause of liberty. Do peop le o f reason today respect religious believers, or the reverse? Or barely tolerate each other?

Friedrich Hayek r e m a r k e d in his Mon t Peler in address ju s t af ter World War II that the partisans o f liberty, in ou r era of violently anti-liberal passions, are few in number . It is self-frustrating for those who de fend liberty by argu- ments taken f rom reason, and those who d e f e n d liberty by reasons taken from faith, to make enemies of one another.

Luckily for all o f us, a genera t ion of serious Protestants two centur ies ago conceived of a new nat ion so generously, with religious liberty for all, that both Jews and Catholics came to find themselves here u n c o m m o n l y at home. We have p rospered here as much as in any count ry that e i ther o f us had ever e x p e r i e n c e d be fore that time.

Our founders often referred to the American expe r imen t as "the second Israel." Like the first people of Israel, the Amer ican colonists were trying to form a new nation. Again like them, ou r founder s had to wrestle with the inadequacies of kings, and to work ou t a more satisfactory form of govern- ment .

At great public events in the days of the founding, long se rmons typically dep loyed two a rguments for liberty, one taken f rom biblical texts, and the o the r taken f rom "the moral f rame of h u m a n na ture . " Each story in the Hebrew Bible narrows down to the arena o f the h u m a n will. In one chapter, King David is faithful to his Lord, and in ano the r not, and the suspense al- ways is: What will he do next? In this respect, the metaphysical narrative our founders had in the back of their minds went someth ing like this: The rea- son the Almighty created the cosmos was so that somewhere in it there would be at least one creature, male and female, to whom he could offer his friend- ship. And the Creator did not want the fr iendship of slaves, bu t of free w o m e n and free men. "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time," Jefferson used to say.

Thus, also, William Penn called the capital city in his new colony "the love of brothers," Philadelphia. H e inscribed as the first article o f his Char te r for the new colony the principle of religious liberty. Without freedom, Penn of ten said, there can be no friendship. At the t ime of the found ing , Pennsylvania ot tered the best and most open mode l o f religious liberty. The Liberty Bell was its fitting symbol, first cast in 1748 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Penn's char ter of religious liberty. The text engraved u p o n it is f rom Leviticus: "Proclaim liberty to all the land, and all the inhabitants thereof."

Thomas Jefferson in his "Declarat ion of Religious Liberty" and J ames Madi- son in his "Remons t rance" d e p e n d e d on this same metaphysical narrative: that the Crea to r made man free. In the rel igions o f a n c i e n t G r e e c e and Rome, the only thing that mat te red for religious practice was external obser- vance. But Juda i sm and Christianity have long d e m a n d e d worship of God "in spirit and truth." Thus, they p r e sen t us - - they , u n i q u e l y - - w i t h an in te r ior

34 Academic Questions/Winter 2002-03

arena, a sacred space, within which each person has an inal ienable obliga- tion, and hence a right, to r espond to his Crea tor as each in conscience sees fit. In this sacred space, no one else may intrude. This decis ion canno t be made by one ' s m o t h e r or father, b r o t h e r or sister, bu t only inalienably by oneself .

In this nation's original found ing narrative, faith and reason work together. Both poin t to liberty as the br ight red thread of h u m a n history. Yet we in ou r day have lost this intellectual synthesis. It lies b roken in f ragments upon the ground, like a great mosaic that has fallen f rom what was once a towering arch above us. That is why the relativism a round us has m u s h r o o m e d . We can no longer de fend the truths our founders took to be self-evident, since we have given up the g round our founders s tood upon.

Vulgar Relativism (A Fraud)

Yet most o f the relativism we face today is not genuine. Most o f it is fake. The very people who claim to be relativists forbid us to smoke anywhere near them; install involuntary seatbelts in ou r cars; implant buzzers that bark at us when we fail prompt ly to obey their dictates; and in many o the r ways march us a r o u n d in the straitjackets o f their own p reconcep t ions . These are no t relativists; they are pr ison wardens. Abou t their own agenda , they are no t relativists; they are totalitarians.

Many sophist icated people love to say that ours is a cynical age. They tlatter themselves: They do not believe nothing; they believe anything. Ours is no t an age of unbelief. It is an age o f gullibility. Think how many actually believed the romance of fascism. Think how many plighted their troth to socialism. Think how many, now today, believe in Global Warming; think how many believe in a coming Ice A g e - - a n d think how many believe in both!

O n e principle that many a rden t souls o f ou r t ime most passionately dis- seminate is vulgar relativism, "nihilism with a happy face." For them, it is certain that there is no truth, only opinion: my opinion, your opinion. They abandon the defense of intellect. The re be ing no purchase of intellect u p o n reality, no th ing else is left bu t p re fe rence , and will is everything. They re- treat to the romance of will.

But this is (if they were serious) to give to Mussolini and Hit ler posthu- mously what they could not vindicate by the most willful force o f arms. It is to miss the tirst great lesson rescued from the ashes of World War II: Those who sur render the domain of intellect make straight the road of fascism. Totali- tarianism, as Mussolini def ined it, is la feroce volontci. It is the will-to-power, unchecked by any regard for truth. To su r rende r the claims of truth u p o n humans is to sur render Earth to thugs. It is to make a mockery of those who e n d u r e d agonies for truth, at the hands of torturers.

Vulgar relativism is an invisible gas, odorless, deadly, that is now pol lut ing every free society on earth. It is a gas that attacks the central ne~-vous system

Etzioni, Smith, Schaub, and Novak 35

of moral striving. This most peri lous threat to the free society today is ne i ther political nor economic . It is the poisonous, cor rup t ing cul ture o f relativism.

A Reckoning

O n e century has passed, a new one has begun . Let us do a reckoning . Solzhenitsyn reports a f inding that 56 million civilians in the Soviet U n i o n alone (not count ing the casualties o f the war) were killed u n d e r Soviet rule by famine, systematic assassination, and the Gulag. Over 100 million o t h e r Europeans also lost their lives f rom 1900 onward, in ways they did no t fore- see, in often g ruesome ways. This is no t even count ing the scores o f millions killed by violence in Asia and in Africa.

There is no guarantee that the twenty-first century will be any less bloody. Still, four lessons were learned dur ing the horrors of the century past, and

two o f t h e m are especially i m p o r t a n t for o u r pu rposes today. First, t ru th matters. Better than cowardice is fidelity to truth.

Second, vulgar relativism so u n d e r m i n e s the cu l ture of l iberty that f ree institutions cannot long survive.

The third and four th lessons, impor t an t e n o u g h in themselves, bu t less impor tan t for our purposes today, are these:

�9 the boast of the dictators that dictatorship is better for the people than "decadent democracy" proved to be empty; and

�9 the boast that socialism is morally superior to capitalism, and better for the poor, was also empty.

On the day that the flag of Russia replaced the h a m m e r and sickle o f the Soviet Un ion over St. P e t e r s b u r g - - a n d the old city took back its name f rom "Len ingrad" - -a phi losopher in that city told me at a celebrat ion in his apart- ment: "Next time you want to try an expe r imen t like socialism, try it ou t on animals f i r s t - -humans it hurts too much."

The First Lesson: Truth Matters

Truth matters. This, in fact, is the greatest o f the lessons g leaned f rom the prisons and in terrogat ion centers o f the Stalinists and the Gestapo. Many, many individuals learned, u n d e r indescr ibab le suffering, that in a cer ta in sense they re ta ined a power their ja i lors could never take f rom them: the inner f r e edom to say '`yes" or "No." Torturers can twist your mind, even re- duce you to a vegetable, bu t as long as you retain the ability to say "Yes" or "No" as truth a lone commands , they canno t own you. And they must keep you intact because what they really want is your complicity.

As the prison l i terature o f the twent ie th cen tury testifies a b u n d a n t l y (a very large literature, alas), t ruth is no t simply a pragmatic compromise , al- though torturers try seductively to p resen t it so. "It is such a little thing," they say. "M1 you have to do is say 'yes,' sign here, and all will be over. We have

36 Academic Questions / Winter 2002-03

been in power for seventy years. We will always be in power. Why can ' t you be pragmatic? Who will ever know? Jus t sign and be d o n e with it."

Yet millions have known in such c i rcumstances that their identi ty as free w o m e n and f ree m e n was at s take; m o r e exactly, the i r sa lvat ion. I r ina Ra tush inskaya , Raoul W a l l e n b e r g , Sylvester Krcmery , A n d r e i Sakharov , Maximilian Kolbe, Vladimir Bukovsky, Vaclav Havel, Anatole Scharansky, Pavel Bratinka, Tomas Halik, Mihailo Mihailov, A r m a n d o Val ladares- - le t us sum- mon up the witnesses, the endless scroll o f h o n o r of ou r century.

To obey truth is to be free, and in cer tain ex t remi t ies no t h i ng is m o r e clear to the t o r m e n t e d mind, no th ing m o r e vital to the survival o f self-re- spect, no th ing so impor tan t to one ' s sense o f r ema in ing a wor thy h u m a n being----of being no one 's cog, par t o f no one ' s machine , and resister to the death against the k ingdom of l i e s - -no th ing is so dear as to hold to truth. In fidelity to truth lies h u m a n dignity.

There is nothing recondi te in this. Simple peop le have of ten seen it more clearly than clerks. This is the plain insight that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ex- pressed when he wrote in his Nobel Address (1970) that one single truth is more powerful than all the weapons in the world, and that, dark as that hou r then seemed in the world, with C o m m u n i s m everywhere advancing, t ruth would prevail against the lie; and that those who clung to truth would over- turn tyranny. (He was correct in his predict ion. Truth did prevail over a r m s - - we are witnesses to history; it is ou r obligation to teach this to ou r children.)

What those learned who suffered in prison in ou r t i m e - - w h a t Dostoevsky learned in prison in the Tsar's t ime-- i s that we h u m a n beings do not own the truth. Truth is not "merely subjective," no t someth ing we make up, or choose , or cut to today's fashions or tomor row ' s p r a g m a t i s m - - w e obe$ the truth. Truth is like the inner light with which evidence shines forth. We do not "have" the truth. Truth owns us. Truth possesses us. Truth is fbtr larger and deeper than we are. Truth leads us where it will. It is not ours for mastering.

Many who resisted the tyrants of ou r era tu rned nihilism inside out. In the nothingness they tound inner light. All knew that the Source of this inner light was not themselves. The relation some gradually assumed toward inner light was that of wordless conversat ion or c o m m u n i o n . Some came to call this light God. They addressed their God in conversat ion, u n d e r the n a m e of Truth. In the twent ie th century, pr isons and to r tu re c h a m b e r s have b e e n bet ter places to encoun te r God than universities.

First, then, truth matters.

The Second Lesson: The Ecology of Liberty

Second, vulgar relativism corrodes , pollutes, c o n s u m e s - - a n d we n e e d to learn again the language of the full h u m a n ecology, the ecology of liberty. We must learn very slowly, very carefully, to put toge ther again the language of virtue and character and the responsibilities of free w o m e n and free men.

Etzioni, Smith, Schaub, and Novak 37

There is the ecology more impor t an t than that of the physical environ- ment: an ecology o f liberty, the moral ecology. In the great struggles over political systems and economic systems o f the twent ie th century , we all bu t forget the first priority, the struggle for a cultural system worthy of liberty.

F reedom canno t g row-- i t canno t even survive-- in every a tmosphere . In the wearying j o u r n e y of h u m a n history, f ree societies have been astonish- ingly rare. The ecology of liberty is more fragile than the biosphere o f earth. F reedom needs clean and healthfill habits, sound families, c o m m o n decen- cies, and the unafra id respect of one h u m a n for another . F r e e d o m needs entire rain forests of little acts of virtue, tangled loyalties, fierce loves, undy- ing commitments . F reedom needs part icular institutions and these, in turn, need peoples of particular habits of the heart.

Cons ider this. T h e r e are two types o f liberty: one pre-critical, emot ive , whimsical, p roper to chi ldren; the o the r critical, sober, del iberate , respon- sible, and p r o p e r to adults. Alexis de Tocquevil le called a t t en t ion to this alternative early in Democracy in America, and at Cambridge Lord Acton put it this way: Liberty is not the f r eedom to do what you wish; it is the f r e edom to do what you ought. H u m a n beings are the only creatures on ear th that do not blindly obey the laws of their nature, by instinct, but are free to choose to obey them with a loving will. Only humans enjoy the liberty to do what we ought to do- -or , alas, not to do it.

It is this second kind of liberty---critical, adul t l iber ty- - tha t lies at the liv- ing core of the free society. It is the liberty o f se l f -command, a to lerable mastery over one 's own passions, bigotry, ignorance, and self-deceit. It is the liberty of self-government in one 's own personal life. For how, James Madi- son once asked, can a people incapable of se l f -government in private life prove capable of it in public? If they canno t practice se l f -government over their private passions, how will they practice it over the insti tutions o f the Republic?

Can there be a free society among citizens who habitually lie, who malin- ger, who constantly cheat, who do not meet their responsibilities, who can- not be counted on, who shirk difticulties, who flout the law---or who prefer to live as serfs or slaves, con ten t in their dependency , so long as they are fed and en te r ta ined?

"The Rew)lution," Charles Peguy once wrote, "is moral; or not at all." This is also the law for the free society. It will d e e p e n its moral cul ture---or it will die. As h u m a n hmgs need air, so does liberty need virtue. The deepes t and most vital struggles of the twenty-tirst century will he cultural a rguments over the sorts of habits necessary to the preservation of liberty. What are the habits we must teach our young? Which are the habits we must encourage in our- selves, and which discourage? To allow liberty to survive--and, m o r e than that, to make it worth all the blood and tears e x p e n d e d to achieve i t - - how do we need to live?

38 Academic Questions / Winter 2002-03

Nihilism builds no cities. Great cultures are built by vaulting asp i ra t ion- - by the Eros of truth and love and just ice and realism that f lung into the sky the Temple of Solomon, the Pa r thenon , Chartres, and, yes, the skyline of New York City.

Special virtues are n e e d e d by self-governing peoples: Calm, de l ibera te , dispassionate reflection; careful, consequence-accept ing choice. In self-govern- ment , citizens are sovereigns, and must learn to exercise the virtues o f sover- eigns.

The free economy, too, demands m o r e virtues than the socialist or Third- World economies: It demands active persons, self-starters, w o m e n and m e n o f enterpr ise and risk. It requires the willingness to sacrifice p resen t plea- sures for rewards that will be enjoyed primarily by future generat ions. It re- quires vision, discovery, invention. And so, too, the pluralist society calls for h igher levels of civility, tolerance, and reasoned public a r g u m e n t than citi- zens in monocul tu ra l times ever needed .

It is a cons tan t struggle to main ta in free societies in any o f the i r th ree parts, economic , political, o r cultural. Of these three, the cultural struggle, long neglected, is the one on whose ou tcome the fate of free societies in the twenty-first century will most depend . We will have to learn, once again, how to think about morals, and how to argue about them publicly, with civility, and also with the moral seriousness of those who know that the survival of liberty depends upon the outcome. The free society is moral , or not at all.

A Burned-Out Comet?

No one ever promised us that free societies will e n d u r e forever. Indeed , a cold view of history shows that submission to tyranny is the m o r e f r equen t condi t ion of the h u m a n race. Free societies have been few in n u m b e r and not often long-lived. Free societies such as ours, which have arisen ra ther late in the long evolution of the h u m a n race, may pass across the darkness of Time like splendid little comets, burn into ashes, and disappear.

But no th ing makes catas t rophe inevitable. We have a chance to avert it. That 's all a free people can ask, isn't it? A turn at bat.