Beyond Peace (34 page)

We should not resort to censorship. We do not deserve to win this vital debate over values if we cannot persuade a fair-minded American people. Nor is a stifling uniformity the answer. One of this nation's great strengths is that we are a diverse nation, with many competing convictions and interests. Free and open public debate has made us stronger, not weaker. There are, however, some basic virtues that all Americans of goodwill can share: honesty, fidelity, thrift, hard work, patriotism, diligence, self-discipline, gratitude, and a belief in liberty, religious freedom, and equality of opportunity. While government cannot ensure these indispensable virtues, it can at least stop weakening them.

Edmund Burke wrote in 1791, “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.” Unfortunately, as Catholic
University professor Claes Ryn observed more recently, “Unlike the old virtue of character, the new virtue does not aim primarily at controlling self but at controlling others.” To the extent that people cannot control themselves, government will do it for them.

Ultimately, the American people must look mainly to religion, the family, and themselves as the driving forces for spiritual renewal. Politically, conservatives must make the case for traditional values and individual accountability in a way that transcends both the mushy moral relativism of modern liberals and the inquisitorial instincts of a few religious zealots. If they do, the vitally important themes of religious renewal and family values can appeal to the vast majority of Americans rather than divide them.

Some of the keenest insights about American life were those of Alexis de Tocqueville one hundred and fifty years ago. In particular, he noted the profound and enduring influence of the religious tradition on American life, law, ideals, morals, and our image of ourselves as a free people. He considered religion even more important for democratic republics than for other types of government because it instills those habits of civic virtue, moral responsibility, deferred gratification, and concern for others on which democracy so heavily depends.

Religious beliefs also help to inoculate Americans against the “idea of the infinite perfectibility of man,” to which, Tocqueville observed, democracies are especially prone.

In its most grotesque form, the utopian impulse culminated in communism and Nazism. In its milder form, it has offered the illusion of a risk-free, redistributionist, effortless abundance, which is neither practically possible nor morally desirable.

Tocqueville was right. Religious freedom has served from the beginning as the cornerstone of our economic freedom and political liberty. The American people must agree that this is true, because we remain among the most religious nations in the world. Militant secularists not only demean the faith of most
Americans but reject the moral precepts that made it possible for our society to thrive for as long as it has. The Constitution may require that we not promote religion in our public schools. But that should not mean rejection of religion in our lives.

Some argue that the basic teachings of religion, especially those that have to do with people's behavior toward one another, can easily be translated into secular terms. You do not have to believe in God, it is said, to honor your parents, to take responsibility for your actions, or to treat others as you would have them treat you. But to separate the teachings of any religion from its mysteries is to cut human beings off from the source of spiritual power that over the centuries has inspired, strengthened, and comforted millions.

Tocqueville also recognized that the separation of church and state was good for both the vitality of American religion and the health of American politics. The founders did not intend to weaken religion by separating it from civil authority. They believed that the real test of faith was whether it is strong enough to tolerate other faiths. They were right. Tocqueville also warned that “religions should be more careful to confine themselves to a proper sphere, for if they wish to extend themselves beyond spiritual matters, they run the risk of not being believed at all.” This is a warning that militants on both the religious right and the religious left would do well to heed. A clergyman's mission is to change people, not to change governments. Norman Vincent Peale's enormous influence was due to the fact that he recognized this fundamental truth. It is one thing to believe devoutly in the truth of one's own religious values. It is quite another to try to impose them on others.

The profound influence of religion on American politics is vital, but it is best when indirect: on the morals, habits, and souls of individual Americans; on the political climate and the principles that should guide policy, rather than on specific policies themselves.

Government cannot reach into people's hearts. Religion
can. That is why I strongly advised Billy Graham in 1960 not to endorse me or any other candidate for office. I told him he would undermine his own ability to change people spiritually if he engaged in activities designed to change governments politically. The same period that has seen social and political crusades increasingly replace religious messages in the pulpits has seen a sharp 35 percent decline in membership of the mainline Protestant denominations associated with the National Council of Churches. In a desperate effort to be “relevant” and modern, some ministers seem to be more interested in saving the spotted owl than in saving souls. As one critic has observed, too many churches seem to have a “political agenda masked in a veneer of spirituality.”

Paul Johnson has observed that businessmen and clergymen who become politicians have tended to display bad political judgment in twentieth-century democracies because they refuse to accept the hard reality that the search for the perfect is the enemy of the good. This is not an argument for moral nihilism or relativism. But the application of moral principles to complex and ambiguous circumstances requires the cautious judgment of statesmen who recognize that the art of politics is the ability to find not the perfect solution but the best solution in an imperfect world.

Those on the right and the left who believe the clergy should play an active role in politics ought to consider the dismal record of the Islamic theocracies, most recently in Iran, or the lamentable record of the mainline Protestant churches that advocated isolationism before World War II, neutralism, disarmament, and American strategic withdrawal during the Cold War, and inaction during the Gulf War.

To renew America, we need a spiritual renewal. Two years ago Henry Grunwald observed that we “may be heading into a new age of faith, when faith will again play a major part in our existence.” Because they addressed spiritual values, the world's great religions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism—have
inspired people for centuries. It comes down to whether the individual believes in something greater than himself. Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky observed in Dostoyevsky's
The Possessed:
“The one essential condition of human existence is that man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great. If men are deprived of the infinitely great, they will not go on living and will die of despair.”

We cannot achieve a spiritual renewal without nurturing the traditional family, on which the American tradition is based. That is where children learn about truth, hard work, obligation, and responsibility.

For most Americans, the family is the most cherished part of their lives. The quality of schools correlates strongly with the quality of the families from which the children come. Generally, children from stable two-parent families do significantly better than children from single-parent families. Poverty also correlates strongly with the quality of families; both its incidence and its intractability are significantly greater in single-parent families. Children of divorce have significantly more emotional, behavioral, and learning difficulties than children from stable two-parent families. It is better for a child to grow up in a healthy one-parent home than in an unhealthy two-parent home. But the evidence suggests powerfully that the best way to raise educational standards, to eradicate poverty, to increase upward mobility, and to promote civic virtue is to strengthen the healthy two-parent family.

Government can contribute to this goal by reducing the tax burdens on families and increasing the paltry size of the family deduction. It should end the bizarre and unfair welfare policies that reward unwed mothers and penalize responsible fathers. Ultimately, though, government has a limited capacity to protect family values. This is a task for religious institutions, individual citizens themselves, and the keepers of our nation's culture.

Opponents have depicted those who call for a revitalization
of traditional family values as intolerant ayatollahs. Some of the harsh, unforgiving ultraconservative rhetoric has given this charge some plausibility. But most who argue for the revival of traditional family values are neither bigoted nor intolerant. The 1992 presidential election provided one example of how, where controversial social issues are concerned, truth sits in the back of the campaign bus while political expediency takes the wheel. Few politicians have been subjected to as much harsh criticism and ridicule by the intellectual establishment as Dan Quayle was when he championed the cause of the two-parent family. Almost every leading newspaper and magazine joined in the assault. But in 1993, after President Bush and he had lost the election, the
Atlantic Monthly
published a cover story with the headline
DAN QUAYLE WAS RIGHT
. The article showed what every fair-minded American leader knows instinctively: that the breakdown of the family is a rot eating at the foundations of a great nation, and that its consequences are being felt most acutely in its cities, where a lost generation is being raised without functioning families and therefore without the benefit of society's best teacher of basic values of humanity and civil behavior.

Most Americans have abundant empathy for the millions of single mothers who struggle heroically to provide for their children as best they can. Many single parents were cast in that predicament by circumstances beyond their control or by honest mistakes. We cannot write them off. Nor can we write off their innocent children. Sometimes, divorce is the lesser of two evils. But many liberals wrongly lapse from justifiable empathy into the fallacy of moral equivalence. Some wrongly take a morally neutral position on the choice between traditional and nontraditional families. Much of the adversarial elite not only trashes the traditional two-parent family as a repressive institution but glorifies the alternatives, which both common sense and the overwhelming body of evidence suggest are more harmful to children and society. Charles Krauthammer offers a perceptive observation: “The deviant is declared normal. And the normal is
unmasked as deviant. That of course makes us all that much more morally equal.” The American people can legitimately demand a moral-cultural climate that promotes traditional family values and that brands alternatives as less desirable. Although divorce should not be prohibited nor single mothers condemned, the American legal system should make divorce and no-fault parenting more difficult than they are today. Our cultural leaders and institutions should also make crystal clear that the debate over family values is not only about right and wrong but also about the nation's future.

The renewal of America depends on individuals striving for excellence. The founders sought to create a system that would permit individuals to define their own fulfillment with minimal interference from the state. They sought to secure each person's own individual natural rights. They believed that achieving a higher common good depended on individuals pursuing their own enlightened self-interest.

This insulated American politics from the storms of religious or ideological politics, but it also created the danger of an obsession with materialism. Foreseeing a day when secular values would triumph completely, Nietzsche warned against what he called the “last man,” a creature totally obsessed with security and comfort and incapable of throwing himself into a higher cause.

We should not glorify struggle or reckless risks as ends in themselves. But we should recognize that the most important achievements in life involve at least some risk, struggle, and adversity.

For a half-century after the end of the greatest war in history, America was driven by the power of its purpose and the daring of its dreams. It was the biggest, the most free, the richest,
the most blessed nation in the world. In the 1950s and 1960s, children learned in school that their nation was the greatest on earth and were taught at home that they should clean their plates because there were children starving in Asia. Today it would be considered politically incorrect and culturally insensitive for schoolteachers to say that America was greater than any other other nation, and if children are told at home to clean their plates, it is because there are people who are hungry in Newark.

The end of World War II ignited sparks of pride, ingenuity, and purpose that propelled our country forward for fifty years. The end of the Cold War, in contrast, has left Americans confused and even frightened about the future. Defeating communism was such an all-consuming mission that it was logical to expect a payoff, to assume that the world would be better when communism had been defeated and that Americans would be better off as well in their daily lives. When the giant peace dividend they had been so recklessly promised failed to materialize, it was equally logical to assume that peace was a giant rip-off. For forty-five years, the American people had been prodded and cajoled toward the promised land of a world at peace, only to find it was the political equivalent of swampland—property that could not support the foundations of the new civilization they had expected to spring up after communism had been defeated.