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578 lines
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This file was uploaded by Ben Morehead, Associate Publisher of
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_Policy_Review_ magazine and authorized agent for the copyright
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owner. All rights reserved. You may contact the Associate Publisher
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To order Policy Review, call 800-544-4843.
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From the Winter 1994 issue of Policy Review magazine:
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REVOLT AGAINST GOD
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America's Spiritual Despair
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WILLIAM J. BENNETT
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We gather in a spirit of celebration. But tonight I speak out of a
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spirit of concern -- for this evening my task is to provide an
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assessment of the social and cultural condition of modern American
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society. And while many people agree that there is much to be
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concerned about these days, I don't think that people fully
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appreciate the depth, or even the nature, of what threatens us --
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and, therefore, we do not yet have a firm hold on what it will take
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to better us. We need to have an honest conversation about these
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issues.
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A few months ago I had lunch with a friend of mine, a man who has
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written for a number of political journals and who now lives in
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Asia. During our conversation the topic turned to America --
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specifically, America as seen through the eyes of foreigners.
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During our conversation, he told me what he had observed during his
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travels: that while the world still regards the United States as
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the leading economic and military power on earth, this same world
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no longer beholds us with the moral respect it once did. When the
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rest of the world looks at America, he said, they see no longer a
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"shining city on a hill." Instead, they see a society in decline,
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with exploding rates of crime and social pathologies. We all know
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that foreigners often come here in fear -- and once they are here,
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they travel in fear. It is our shame to realize that they have good
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reason to fear; a record number of them get killed here.
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Today, many who come to America believe they are visiting a
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degraded society. Yes, America still offers plenty of jobs,
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enormous opportunity, and unmatched material and physical comforts.
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But there is a growing sense among many foreigners that when they
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come here, they are slumming. I have, like many of us, an
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instinctive aversion to foreigners harshly judging my nation; yet
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I must concede that much of what they think is true.
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"You're Becoming American"
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I recently had a conversation with a D.C. cab driver who is doing
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graduate work at American University. He told me that once he
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receives his masters degree he is going back to Africa. His reason?
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His children. He doesn't think they are safe in Washington. He told
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me that he didn't want them to grow up in a country where young men
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will paw his daughter and expect her to be an "easy target," and
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where his son might be a different kind of target -- the target of
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violence from the hands of other young males. "It is more civilized
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where I come from," said this man from Africa. I urged him to move
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outside of Washington; things should improve.
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But it is not only violence and urban terror that signal decay. We
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see it in many forms. Newsweek columnist Joe Klein recently wrote
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about Berenice Belizaire, a young Haitian girl who arrived in New
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York in 1987. When she arrived in America she spoke no English and
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her family lived in a cramped Brooklyn apartment. Eventually
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Berenice enrolled at James Madison High School, where she excelled.
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According to Judith Khan, a math teacher at James Madison, "[The
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immigrants are] why I love teaching in Brooklyn. They have a drive
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in them that we no longer seem to have." And far from New York
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City, in the beautiful Berkshire mountains where I went to school,
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Philip Kasinitz, an assistant professor of sociology at Williams
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College, has observed that Americans have become the object of
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ridicule among immigrant students on campus. "There's an
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interesting phenomenon. When immigrant kids criticize each other
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for getting lazy or loose, they say, `You're becoming American,'"
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Kasinitz says. "Those who work hardest to keep American culture at
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bay have the best chance of becoming American success stories."
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Last year an article was published in the Washington Post which
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pointed out how students from other countries adapt to the
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lifestyle of most American teens. Paulina, a Polish high school
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student studying in the United States, said that when she first
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came here she was amazed by the way teens spent their time.
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According to Paulina:
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In Warsaw, we would talk to friends after school, go home and
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eat with our parents and then do four or five hours of homework.
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When I first came here, it was like going into a crazy world, but
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now I am getting used to it. I'm going to Pizza Hut and watching TV
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and doing less work in school. I can tell it is not a good thing to
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get used to.
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Think long and hard about these words, spoken by a young Polish
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girl about America: "When I first came here it was like going into
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a crazy world, but now I am getting used to it." And, "I can tell
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it is not a good thing to get used to."
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Something has gone wrong with us.
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Social Regression
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This is a conclusion which I come to with great reluctance. During
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the late 1960s and 1970s, I was one of those who reacted strongly
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to criticisms of America that swept across university campuses. I
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believe that many of those criticisms -- "Amerika" as an inherently
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repressive, imperialist, and racist society -- were wrong then, and
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they are wrong now. But intellectual honesty demands that we accept
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facts that we would sometimes like to wish away. Hard truths are
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truths nonetheless. And the hard truth is that something has gone
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wrong with us.
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America is not in danger of becoming a third world country; we are
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too rich, too proud and too strong to allow that to happen. It is
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not that we live in a society completely devoid of virtue. Many
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people live well, decently, even honorably. There are families,
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schools, churches and neighborhoods that work. There are places
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where virtue is taught and learned. But there is a lot less of this
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than there ought to be. And we know it. John Updike put it this
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way: "The fact that... we still live well cannot ease the pain of
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feeling that we no longer live nobly."
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Let me briefly outline some of the empirical evidence that points
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to cultural decline, evidence that while we live well materially,
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we don't live nobly. Earlier this year I released, through the
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auspices of the Heritage Foundation, The Index of Leading Cultural
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Indicators, the most comprehensive statistical portrait available
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of behavioral trends over the last 30 years. Among the findings:
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since 1960, the population has increased 41 percent; the Gross
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Domestic Product has nearly tripled; and total social spending by
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all levels of government (measured in constant 1990 dollars) has
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risen from $142.7 billion to $787 billion -- more than a five-fold
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increase.
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But during the same thirty-year period, there has been a 560
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percent increase in violent crime; more than a 400 percent increase
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in illegitimate births; a quadrupling in divorces; a tripling of
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the percentage of children living in single-parent homes; more than
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a 200 percent increase in the teenage suicide rate; and a drop of
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75 points in the average S.A.T. scores of high-school students.
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These are not good things to get used to.
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Today 30 percent of all births and 68 percent of black births are
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illegitimate. By the end of the decade, according to the most
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reliable projections, 40 percent of all American births and 80
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percent of minority births will occur out of wedlock.
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These are not good things to get used to.
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And then there are the results of an on-going teacher survey. Over
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the years teachers have been asked to identify the top problems in
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America's schools. In 1940 teachers identified them as talking out
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of turn; chewing gum; making noise; running in the hall; cutting in
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line; dress code infractions; and littering. When asked the same
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question in 1990, teachers identified drug use; alcohol abuse;
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pregnancy; suicide; rape; robbery; and assault. These are not good
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things to get used to, either.
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Consider, too, where the United States ranks in comparison with the
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rest of the industrialized world. We are at or near the top in
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rates of abortions, divorces, and unwed births. We lead the
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industrialized world in murder, rape and violent crime. And in
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elementary and secondary education, we are at or near the bottom in
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achievement scores.
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These facts alone are evidence of substantial social regression.
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But there are other signs of decay, ones that do not so easily lend
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themselves to quantitative analyses (some of which I have already
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suggested in my opening anecdotes). What I am talking about is the
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moral, spiritual and aesthetic character and habits of a society --
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what the ancient Greeks referred to as its ethos. And here, too, we
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are facing serious problems. For there is a coarseness, a
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callousness, a cynicism, a banality, and a vulgarity to our time.
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There are just too many signs of de-civilization -- that is,
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civilization gone rotten. And the worst of it has to do with our
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children. Apart from the numbers and the specific facts, there is
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the on-going, chronic crime against children: the crime of making
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them old before their time. We live in a culture which at times
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seems almost dedicated to the corruption of the young, to assuring
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the loss of their innocence before their time.
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This may sound overly pessimistic or even alarmist, but I think
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this is the way it is. And my worry is that people are not
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unsettled enough; I don't think we are angry enough. We have become
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inured to the cultural rot that is setting in. Like Paulina, we are
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getting used to it, even though it is not a good thing to get used
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to. People are experiencing atrocity overload, losing their
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capacity for shock, disgust, and outrage. A few weeks ago eleven
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people were murdered in New York City within ten hours -- and as
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far as I can tell, it barely caused a stir.
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Two weeks ago a violent criminal, who mugged and almost killed a
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72-year old man and was shot by a police officer while fleeing the
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scene of the crime, was awarded $4.3 million. Virtual silence.
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And during last year's Los Angeles riots, Damian Williams and Henry
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Watson were filmed pulling an innocent man out of a truck, crushing
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his skull with a brick, and doing a victory dance over his fallen
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body. Their lawyers then built a successful legal defense on the
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proposition that people cannot be held accountable for getting
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caught up in mob violence. ("They just got caught up in the riot,"
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one juror told the New York Times. "I guess maybe they were in the
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wrong place at the wrong time.") When the trial was over and these
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men were found not guilty on most counts, the sound you heard
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throughout the land was relief. We are "defining deviancy down," in
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Senator Moynihan's memorable phrase. And in the process we are
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losing a once-reliable sense of civic and moral outrage.
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Urban Surrender
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Listen to this story from former New York City Police Commissioner
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Raymond Kelly:
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A number of years ago there began to appear, in the windows of
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automobiles parked on the streets of American cities, signs which
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read: `No radio.' Rather than express outrage, or even annoyance at
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the possibility of a car break-in, people tried to communicate with
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the potential thief in conciliatory terms. The translation of `no
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radio' is: "Please break into someone else's car, there's nothing
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in mine." These `no radio' signs are flags of urban surrender. They
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are hand-written capitulations. Instead of `no radio,' we need new
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signs that say `no surrender.'
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And what is so striking today is not simply the increased number of
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violent crimes, but the nature of those crimes. It is no longer
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"just" murder we see, but murders with a prologue, murders
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accompanied by acts of unspeakable cruelty and inhumanity.
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From pop culture, with our own ears, we have heard the terrible
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debasement of music. Music, harmony and rhythm find their way into
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the soul and fasten mightily upon it, Plato's Republic teaches us.
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Because music has the capacity to lift us up or to bring us down,
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we need to pay more careful attention to it. It is a steep moral
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slide from Bach, and even Buddy Holly, to Guns 'n Roses and 2 Live
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Crew. This week an indicted murderer, Snoop Doggy Dogg, saw his rap
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album, "Doggystyle," debut at number one. It may be useful for you
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to read, as I have, some of his lyrics and other lyrics from heavy
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metal and rap music, and then ask yourself: how much worse could it
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possibly get? And then ask yourself: what will happen when young
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boys who grow up on mean streets, without fathers in their lives,
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are constantly exposed to music which celebrates the torture and
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abuse of women?
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There is a lot of criticism directed at television these days --
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the casual cruelty, the rampant promiscuity, the mindlessness of
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sit-coms and soap operas. Most of the criticisms are justified. But
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this is not the worst of it. The worst of television is the
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day-time television talk shows, where indecent exposure is
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celebrated as a virtue. It is hard to remember now, but there was
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once a time when personal failures, subliminal desires, and
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perverse taste were accompanied by guilt or embarrassment, at least
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by silence.
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Today these are a ticket to appear as a guest on the Sally Jessy
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Raphael show, or one of the dozens or so shows like it. I asked my
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staff to provide me with a list of some of the day-time talk-show
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topics from only the last two weeks. They include: cross-dressing
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couples; a three-way love affair; a man whose chief aim in life is
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to sleep with women and fool them into thinking that he is using a
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condom during sex; women who can't say no to cheating; prostitutes
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who love their jobs; a former drug dealer; and an interview with a
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young girl caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle. These
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shows present a two-edged problem to society: the first edge is
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that some people want to appear on these shows in order to expose
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themselves. The second edge is that lots of people are tuning in to
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watch them expose themselves. This is not a good thing to get used
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to.
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Who's to blame? Here I would caution conservatives against the
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tendency to blame liberals for our social disorders. Contemporary
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liberalism does have a lot for which to answer; many of its
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doctrines have wrought a lot of damage. Universities,
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intellectuals, think tanks, and government departments have put a
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lot of poison into the reservoirs of national discourse. But to
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simply point the finger of blame at liberals and elites is wrong.
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The hard fact of the matter is that this was not something done to
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us; it is also something we have done to ourselves. Liberals may
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have been peddling from an empty wagon, but we were buying.
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Much of what I have said is familiar to many of you. Why is this
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happening? What is behind all this? Intelligent arguments have been
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advanced as to why these things have come to pass. Thoughtful
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people have pointed to materialism and consumerism; an overly
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permissive society; the writings of Rousseau, Marx, Freud,
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Nietzsche; the legacy of the 1960s; and so on. There is truth in
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almost all of these accounts. Let me give you mine.
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Spiritual Acedia
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I submit to you that the real crisis of our time is spiritual.
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Specifically, our problem is what the ancients called acedia.
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Acedia is the sin of sloth. But acedia, as understood by the saints
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of old, is not laziness about life's affairs (which is what we
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normally think sloth to be). Acedia is something else; properly
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understood, acedia is an aversion to and a negation of spiritual
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things. Acedia reveals itself as an undue concern for external
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affairs and worldly things. Acedia is spiritual torpor; an absence
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of zeal for divine things. And it brings with it, according to the
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ancients, "a sadness, a sorrow of the world."
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Acedia manifests itself in man's "joyless, ill-tempered, and
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self-seeking rejection of the nobility of the children of God." The
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slothful man hates the spiritual, and he wants to be free of its
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demands. The old theologians taught that acedia arises from a heart
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steeped in the worldly and carnal, and from a low esteem of divine
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things. It eventually leads to a hatred of the good altogether.
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With hatred comes more rejection, more ill-temper, more sadness,
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and sorrow.
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Spiritual acedia is not a new condition, of course. It is the
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seventh capital sin. But today it is in ascendance. In coming to
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this conclusion, I have relied on two literary giants -- men born
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on vastly different continents, the product of two completely
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different worlds, and shaped by wholly different experiences -- yet
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writers who possess strikingly similar views, and who have had a
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profound impact on my own thinking. It was an unusual and
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surprising moment to find their views coincident.
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When the late novelist Walker Percy was asked what concerned him
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most about the future of America, he answered:
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Probably the fear of seeing America, with all its great
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strength and beauty and freedom... gradually subside into decay
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through default and be defeated, not by the Communist movement....
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but from within by weariness, boredom, cynicism, greed and in the
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end helplessness before its great problems.
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And here are the words of the prophetic Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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(echoing his 1978 Harvard commencement address in which he warned
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of the West's "spiritual exhaustion"):
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In the United States the difficulties are not a Minotaur or a
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dragon -- not imprisonment, hard labor, death, government
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harassment and censorship -- but cupidity, boredom, sloppiness,
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indifference. Not the acts of a mighty all-pervading repressive
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government but the failure of a listless public to make use of the
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freedom that is its birthright.
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What afflicts us, then, is a corruption of the heart, a turning
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away in the soul. Our aspirations, our affections and our desires
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are turned toward the wrong things. And only when we turn them
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toward the right things -- toward enduring, noble, spiritual things
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-- will things get better.
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Lest I leave the impression of bad news on all fronts, I do want to
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be clear about the areas where I think we have made enormous gains:
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material comforts, economic prosperity and the spread of democracy
|
|||
|
around the world. The American people have achieved a standard of
|
|||
|
living unimagined 50 years ago. We have seen extraordinary advances
|
|||
|
in medicine, science and technology. Life expectancy has increased
|
|||
|
more than 20 years during the last six decades. Opportunity and
|
|||
|
equality have been extended to those who were once denied them. And
|
|||
|
of course America prevailed in our "long, twilight struggle"
|
|||
|
against communism. Impressive achievements, all.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Yet even with all of this, the conventional analysis is still that
|
|||
|
this nation's major challenges have to do with getting more of the
|
|||
|
same: achieving greater economic growth, job creation, increased
|
|||
|
trade, health care, or more federal programs. Some of these things
|
|||
|
are desirable, such as greater economic growth and increased trade;
|
|||
|
some of them are not, such as more federal programs. But to look to
|
|||
|
any or all of them as the solution to what ails us is akin to
|
|||
|
assigning names to images and shadows, it so widely misses the
|
|||
|
mark.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
If we have full employment and greater economic growth -- if we
|
|||
|
have cities of gold and alabaster -- but our children have not
|
|||
|
learned how to walk in goodness, justice, and mercy, then the
|
|||
|
American experiment, no matter how gilded, will have failed.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
I realize I have laid down strong charges, a tough indictment. Some
|
|||
|
may question them. But if I am wrong, if my diagnosis is not right,
|
|||
|
then someone must explain to me this: why do Americans feel so bad
|
|||
|
when things are economically, militarily and materially so good?
|
|||
|
Why amidst this prosperity and security are enormous numbers of
|
|||
|
people -- almost 70 percent of the public -- saying that we are off
|
|||
|
track? This paradox is described in the Scottish author John
|
|||
|
Buchan's work. Writing a half-century ago, he described the "coming
|
|||
|
of a too garish age, when life would be lived in the glare of neon
|
|||
|
lamps and the spirit would have no solitude." Here is what Buchan
|
|||
|
wrote about his nightmare world:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
In such a [nightmare] world everyone would have leisure. But
|
|||
|
everyone would be restless, for there would be no spiritual
|
|||
|
discipline in life....It would be a feverish, bustling world,
|
|||
|
self-satisfied and yet malcontent, and under the mask of a riotous
|
|||
|
life there would be death at the heart. In the perpetual hurry of
|
|||
|
life there would be no chance of quiet for the soul.... In such a
|
|||
|
bagman's paradise, where life would be rationalised and padded with
|
|||
|
every material comfort, there would be little satisfaction for the
|
|||
|
immortal part of man.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
During the last decade of the twentieth century, many have achieved
|
|||
|
this bagman's paradise. And this is not a good thing to get used
|
|||
|
to.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
In identifying spiritual exhaustion as the central problem, I part
|
|||
|
company with many. There is a disturbing reluctance in our time to
|
|||
|
talk seriously about matters spiritual and religious. Why? Perhaps
|
|||
|
it has to do with the modern sensibility's profound discomfort with
|
|||
|
the language and the commandments of God. Along with other bad
|
|||
|
habits, we have gotten used to not talking about the things which
|
|||
|
matter most -- and so, we don't.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
One will often hear that religious faith is a private matter that
|
|||
|
does not belong in the public arena. But this analysis does not
|
|||
|
hold -- at least on some important points. Whatever your faith --
|
|||
|
or even if you have none at all -- it is a fact that when millions
|
|||
|
of people stop believing in God, or when their belief is so
|
|||
|
attenuated as to be belief in name only, enormous public
|
|||
|
consequences follow. And when this is accompanied by an aversion to
|
|||
|
spiritual language by the political and intellectual class, the
|
|||
|
public consequences are even greater. How could it be otherwise? In
|
|||
|
modernity, nothing has been more consequential, or more public in
|
|||
|
its consequences, than large segments of American society privately
|
|||
|
turning away from God, or considering Him irrelevant, or declaring
|
|||
|
Him dead. Dostoyevsky reminded us in Brothers Karamazov that "if
|
|||
|
God does not exist, everything is permissible." We are now seeing
|
|||
|
"everything." And much of it is not good to get used to.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Social Regeneration
|
|||
|
What can be done? First, here are the short answers: do not
|
|||
|
surrender; get mad; and get in the fight. Now, let me offer a few,
|
|||
|
somewhat longer, prescriptions.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
1. At the risk of committing heresy before a Washington audience,
|
|||
|
let me suggest that our first task is to recognize that, in
|
|||
|
general, we place too much hope in politics. I am certainly not
|
|||
|
denying the impact (for good and for ill) of public policies. I
|
|||
|
would not have devoted the past decade of my life to public service
|
|||
|
-- and I could not work at the Heritage Foundation -- if I believed
|
|||
|
that the work with which I was engaged amounted to nothing more
|
|||
|
than striving after wind and ashes. But it is foolish, and futile,
|
|||
|
to rely primarily on politics to solve moral, cultural, and
|
|||
|
spiritual afflictions.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The last quarter-century has taught politicians a hard and humbling
|
|||
|
lesson: there are intrinsic limits to what the state can do,
|
|||
|
particularly when it comes to imparting virtue, and forming and
|
|||
|
forging character, and providing peace to souls. Samuel Johnson
|
|||
|
expressed this (deeply conservative and true) sentiment when he
|
|||
|
wrote "How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which
|
|||
|
laws or kings can cause or cure!"
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
King Lear was a great king -- sufficient to all his political
|
|||
|
responsibilities and obligations. He did well as king, but as a
|
|||
|
father and a man, he messed up terribly. The great king was reduced
|
|||
|
to the mud and ignominy of the heath, cursing his daughters, his
|
|||
|
life, his gods. Politics is a great adventure; it is greatly
|
|||
|
important; but its proper place in our lives has been greatly
|
|||
|
exaggerated. Politics -- especially inside the Beltway politics --
|
|||
|
has too often become the graven image of our time.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
2. We must have public policies that once again make the connection
|
|||
|
between our deepest beliefs and our legislative agenda. Do we
|
|||
|
Americans, for example, believe that man is a spiritual being with
|
|||
|
a potential for individual nobility and moral responsibility? Or do
|
|||
|
we believe that his ultimate fate is to be merely a soulless cog in
|
|||
|
the machine of state? When we teach sex-education courses to
|
|||
|
teen-agers, do we treat them as if they are young animals in heat?
|
|||
|
Or, do we treat them as children of God?
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
In terms of public policy, the failure is not so much intellectual;
|
|||
|
it is a failure of will and courage. Right now we are playing a
|
|||
|
rhetorical game: we say one thing and we do another. Consider the
|
|||
|
following:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
We say that we desire from our children more civility and
|
|||
|
responsibility, but in many of our schools we steadfastly refuse to
|
|||
|
teach right and wrong.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
We say that we want law and order in the streets, but we
|
|||
|
allow criminals, including violent criminals, to return to those
|
|||
|
same streets.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
We say that we want to stop illegitimacy, but we continue
|
|||
|
to subsidize the kind of behavior that virtually guarantees high
|
|||
|
rates of illegitimacy.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
We say that we want to discourage teenage sexual
|
|||
|
activity, but in classrooms all across America educators are more
|
|||
|
eager to dispense condoms than moral guidance.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
We say that we want more families to stay together, but
|
|||
|
we liberalize divorce laws and make divorce easier to attain.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
We say that we want to achieve a color blind society and
|
|||
|
judge people by the content of their character, but we continue to
|
|||
|
count by race, skin and pigment.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
We say that we want to encourage virtue and honor among
|
|||
|
the young, but it has become a mark of sophistication to shun the
|
|||
|
language of morality.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3. We desperately need to recover a sense of the fundamental
|
|||
|
purpose of education, which is to provide for the intellectual and
|
|||
|
moral education of the young. From the ancient Greeks to the
|
|||
|
founding fathers, moral instruction was the central task of
|
|||
|
education. "If you ask what is the good of education," Plato said,
|
|||
|
"the answer is easy -- that education makes good men, and that good
|
|||
|
men act nobly." Jefferson believed that education should aim at
|
|||
|
improving one's "morals" and "faculties." And of education, John
|
|||
|
Locke said this: "Tis' virtue that we aim at, hard virtue, and not
|
|||
|
the subtle arts of shifting." Until a quarter-century or so ago,
|
|||
|
this consensus was so deep as to go virtually unchallenged. Having
|
|||
|
departed from this time-honored belief, we are now reaping the
|
|||
|
whirlwind. And so we talk not about education as the architecture
|
|||
|
of souls, but about "skills facilitation" and "self-esteem" and
|
|||
|
about being "comfortable with ourselves."
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
4. As individuals and as a society, we need to return religion to
|
|||
|
its proper place. Religion, after all, provides us with moral
|
|||
|
bearings. And if I am right and the chief problem we face is
|
|||
|
spiritual impoverishment, then the solution depends, finally, on
|
|||
|
spiritual renewal. I am not speaking here about coerced spiritual
|
|||
|
renewal -- in fact, there is no such thing -- but about renewal
|
|||
|
freely taken.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The enervation of strong religious beliefs -- in both our private
|
|||
|
lives as well as our public conversations -- has de-moralized
|
|||
|
society. We ignore religion and its lessons at our peril. But
|
|||
|
instead of according religion its proper place, much of society
|
|||
|
ridicules and disdains it, and mocks those who are serious about
|
|||
|
their faith. In America today, the only respectable form of bigotry
|
|||
|
is bigotry directed against religious people. This antipathy toward
|
|||
|
religion cannot be explained by the well-publicized moral failures
|
|||
|
and financial excesses of a few leaders or charlatans, or by the
|
|||
|
censoriousness of some of their followers. No, the reason for
|
|||
|
hatred of religion is because it forces modern man to confront
|
|||
|
matters he would prefer to ignore.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Every serious student of American history, familiar with the
|
|||
|
writings of the founders, knows the civic case for religion. It
|
|||
|
provides society with a moral anchor -- and nothing else has yet
|
|||
|
been found to substitute for it. Religion tames our baser
|
|||
|
appetites, passions, and impulses. And it helps us to thoughtfully
|
|||
|
sort through the "ordo amoris," the order of the loves.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
But remember, too, that for those who believe, it is a mistake to
|
|||
|
treat religion merely as a useful means to worldly ends. Religion
|
|||
|
rightly demands that we take seriously not only the commandments of
|
|||
|
the faith, but that we also take seriously the object of the faith.
|
|||
|
Those who believe know that although we are pilgrims and sojourners
|
|||
|
and wanderers in this earthly kingdom, ultimately we are citizens
|
|||
|
of the City of God -- a City which man did not build and cannot
|
|||
|
destroy, a City where there is no sadness, where the sorrows of the
|
|||
|
world find no haven, and where there is peace the world cannot
|
|||
|
give.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Pushing Back
|
|||
|
Let me conclude. In his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William
|
|||
|
Faulkner declared "I decline to accept the end of man." Man will
|
|||
|
not merely endure but prevail because, as Faulkner said, he alone
|
|||
|
among creatures "has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and
|
|||
|
sacrifice and endurance."
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Today we must in the same way decline to accept the end of moral
|
|||
|
man. We must carry on the struggle, for our children. We will push
|
|||
|
back hard against an age that is pushing hard against us. When we
|
|||
|
do, we will emerge victorious against the trials of our time. When
|
|||
|
we do, we will save our children from the decadence of our time.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
We have a lot of work to do. Let's get to it.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
To reprint more than short quotations, please write or FAX Ben
|
|||
|
Morehead, Associate Publisher, Policy Review, 214 Massachusetts
|
|||
|
Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002, FAX (202) 675-0291.
|
|||
|
|