Slouching Towards Gomorrah (54 page)

There is also the optimistic view that modern liberalism will fail of itself because it is incoherent as well as intellectually and morally bankrupt. But history teaches that neither intellectual nor moral insolvency necessarily leads to failure. Bankrupt enterprises can survive and do extensive damage for long periods of time, as both the Soviet Union and its spiritual predecessor, the Mongol Empire, demonstrated. The inmates of universities and think tanks are fond of reassuring one another that ideas not only have consequences
but are ultimately decisive. That is true but not necessarily consoling. There is no guarantee that the best or most benign ideas will win out.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., spoke of the “marketplace of ideas.” As is often the case, an arresting metaphor has paralyzed thought. The winner in that marketplace is not always, or perhaps even usually, the superior product. The economic marketplace penalizes bad decisions. The intellectual and cultural “marketplace”—in which the ideas of politics, the humanities, and most of the social sciences, and popular entertainment are offered—imposes few or no penalties for being wrong, even egregiously wrong. In fact, patently foolish ideas are likely to be regarded as daring. At Yale there was always a sizable minority on the law faculty ready to hire candidates who rejected all the conventional learning in their fields but had nothing to put in their place. It was said of such intellectual adolescents that they had “gone to the frontier.” If only they had. The left-wing intellectual—take John Kenneth Galbraith as the prototype—can go on selling defunct ideas for decades. The forces that put the Edsel out of business do not apply to Harvard professors.

These somber reflections may seem to suggest that the best strategy for those of us who detest modern liberalism and all its works may be simply to seek sanctuary, to attempt to create small islands of decency and civility in the midst of a subpagan culture. Gated communities and the home-schooling movement are the beginning of such responses—one an attempt to find safety, the other an effort to keep children out of the corrupting embrace of public school systems run by modern liberals. The creation of enclaves to preserve the virtues that the West has so assiduously cultivated, until now, is not a solution to be despised. Thomas Cahill describes how Irish monasteries, on the fringe of civilization, kept alive religion and classical learning during Europe’s Dark Ages:

The shrine of Skellig Michael (named after St. Michael, and actually seven miles off the coast) consisted of six stone beehive cells and a small oratory.
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The pinnacle’s sheer rock sides and the fierce Atlantic gales made it an uncomfortable and dangerous place for the monks. When the Continent was once more ready for civilization, the Irish reintroduced Christianity and the religious and secular classics their monks had copied.

For some, it may be possible to view the coming of a new Dark Ages with equanimity. During the worst of the Clarence Thomas hearings, the nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court was subjected to scurrilous and vulgar sexual allegations that were telecast internationally. The shock of seeing how far our governing processes had descended was so great that I went to a friend’s office and said, “Television is showing the end of Western civilization in living color.” He replied, “Of course it’s coming to an end. But don’t worry. It takes a long time, and in the meantime it’s possible to live well.” That is the Ausonian philosophy.

It is not necessarily true, however, that the collapse will proceed in slow motion. Cultural calamities can happen quickly. The Sixties, for example, were upon us before we knew it. Nor is the prospect of sheltered enclaves entirely consoling. It is possible that we will not be allowed to create islands of freedom and decency. Christianity and learning survived on Skellig Michael and in other monasteries only because the barbarian hordes did not think Ireland worth conquering. Had they done so, Western civilization, if it still deserved that name, would be very different and much poorer in spirit and intellect than it became. In contrast, modern
liberals, today’s barbarians, would impose their entertainments, their laws, their regulations, and their court decrees into whatever sanctuaries we may create. One must never underestimate what Richard John Neuhaus called “the profound bigotry and anti-intellectualism and intolerance and illiberality of liberalism.”
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It is an open question, therefore, whether an Ausonian strategy will prove feasible in our time.

What may be feasible is a moral regeneration and an intellectual understanding capable of defeating modern liberalism. In a discussion of that possibility with friends, we came up with four events that could produce a moral and spiritual regeneration: a religious revival; the revival of public discourse about morality; a cataclysmic war; or a deep economic depression. Though there was increased social discipline during the Second World War and, perhaps even more, during the Great Depression, we may safely drop the last two items on that list as, to say the least, social policies lacking broad public support.

Perhaps the most promising development in our time is the rise of an energetic, optimistic, and politically sophisticated religious conservatism. It may prove more powerful than merely political or economic conservatism because religious conservatism’s objectives are cultural and moral as well. Thus, though these conservatives can help elect candidates to national and statewide offices, as they have repeatedly demonstrated, their more important influence may lie elsewhere. Because it is a grass roots movement, the new religious conservatism can alter the culture both by electing local officials and school boards (which have greater effects on culture than do national politicians), and by setting a moral tone in opposition to today’s liberal relativism.

We may be witnessing a religious revival, another awakening. Not only are the evangelicals stronger than ever in their various denominations but other organizations are likely to bring fresh spiritual forces to our culture and, ultimately, to our politics. The Christian Coalition, the Catholic Campaign for America, and the resurgence of interest among the young in Orthodox Judaism are all signs that religion is gaining strength. If so, religious precepts will eventually influence political action.

Promise Keepers, like earlier religious awakenings that benefited America, adds an emotional fervor to churches that too often
lacked it. It may be a crucial question for the culture whether the Roman Church can be restored to its former strength and orthodoxy. Because it is Americas largest denomination, and the only one with strong central authority, the Catholic Church can be a major opponent of the nihilism of modern liberal culture. Pope John Paul II has been attempting to lead an intellectual and spiritual reinvigoration, but there is resistance within the Church. Modern liberal culture has made inroads with some of the hierarchy as well as the laity. It remains to be seen whether intellectual orthodoxy can stand firm against the currents of radical individualism and radical egalitarianism. For the moment, the outcome is in doubt.

Liberals of the modern variety are hostile to religious conservatism in any denomination. They realize, quite correctly, that it is a threat to their agenda. For that reason, they regularly refer to the “religious right,” using the term as a pejorative to suggest that anything conservative is extreme. No conservative, religious or secular, ought to accept the phrase. There is no symmetry of “left” and “right” in religion, in our culture or in our politics. The Left, as has been apparent throughout our history, and never more so than in the Sixties, is alienated and hostile to American institutions and traditions. They will destroy those institutions and traditions if they can. There is no group of comparable size and influence to balance the extremists of modern liberalism, no “right” that has a similarly destructive program in mind.

Modern liberals try to frighten Americans by saying that religious conservatives “want to impose their morality on others.” That is palpable foolishness. All participants in politics want to “impose” on others as much of their morality as possible, and no group is more insistent on that than liberals. Religious conservatives are not authoritarian. To the degree they have their way, it will be through democratic processes. The culture would then resemble the better aspects of the 1950s; and that would be cause for rejoicing.

Religion is, of course, not the only source of morality. The English philosopher Roger Scruton argues that “It would be a great mistake to suppose that religious belief is the only antidote to this [liberal) ideology.”
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That is certainly true. Whether, as Scruton proposes, “piety,” divorced from religion but anchored in an
unconscious awareness that customs and traditions embody great wisdom, is sufficient to restore virtue to a degenerate culture is more dubious. Piety in this sense is an aristocratic notion that depends on an unquestioning acceptance of tradition. Once that is lost, however, it would seem impossible to regain. People can hardly be argued into accepting a view unconsciously.

There is, of course, a secular language of morality, but it is self-conscious rather than unaware. While hoping for a religious reawakening, we had best also speak the language of secular morality to a society that has become largely secular. The language of secular morality is spoken increasingly by conservative commentators in the press and on talk radio. That language takes the form of ridiculing the idiocies of modern liberalism and extolling traditional values. Talk radio, in particular, provides a way to reach the public by bypassing the print press and television, which remain overwhelmingly liberal. The effectiveness of talk radio may be gauged by the hysteria it generates in the liberal press and among liberal politicians.

We need not decide here whether secular morality is merely the dwindling moral capital of religious belief that has faded. C. S. Lewis made the argument that ethics or morality precedes religion. But in that case there would be little social value to religion; secular ethics would be sufficient to maintain a society’s virtue. The evidence is running rather strongly against that point of view. Perhaps a society—at least a Western society in which Christianity had been dominant—cannot retain its virtue when religion has lapsed.

One indication that morality, secular or religious, still retains strength is that our politics are becoming increasingly, if erratically and inconsistently, conservative. Our two political parties are increasingly polarized on cultural issues and the Republican electoral victory of 1994 surely reflected dissatisfaction with the degenerate culture liberals have made. Bill Clintons subsequent adoption of Republican rhetoric and policies as his own, however insincere, is another sign that a conservative cultural as well as political revival is probably underway. It is quite possible, however, that the party of cultural conservatism will be defeated by the public appetite for the welfare state. The electorate balks at conservative programs that would deprive them of the slightest amount of the entitlements and benefits they now enjoy. Campaigns and
elections are crucial, nevertheless, precisely because our parties have, by and large, lined up on opposite sides of the cultural divide. Elections are important not only because of the policies adopted and laws enacted but as symbolic victories for one set of values or the other.

But it is well to remember the limits of politics. The political nation is not the same as the cultural nation; the two have different leaders and very different views of the world. Even when conservative political leaders have the votes, liberal cultural leaders operate and exercise influence where votes do not count. However many political victories conservatives may produce, they cannot attack modern liberalism in its fortresses. If conservatives come to control the White House and both Houses of Congress, there will be very little change in Hollywood, the network evening news, universities, church bureaucracies, the
New York Times
, or the
Washington Post.
Institutions that are overwhelmingly left-liberal (89 percent of journalists voted for Bill Clinton in 1992) will continue to misinform the public and distort public discourse. The obscenities of popular entertainment will often be protected by the courts. The tyrannies of political correctness and multiculturalism will not be ejected from the universities by any number of conservative victories at the polls. Modern liberals captured the government and its bureaucracies because they captured the culture. Conservative political victories will always be tenuous and fragile unless conservatives recapture the culture.

The election of Ronald Reagan and the defeat of a clutch of very liberal Democratic senators in 1980 seemed to many of us a decisive turn for the better in our culture. The “Reagan Revolution” was to be a sharp break with liberal trends. Liberals thought otherwise. If their response to the 1980 elections is any guide, in reaction to future conservative victories at the polls, modern liberals will only become more intolerant, untruthful, venomous, and abusive. The cultural phase of the revolution petered out; Reagan lost the Senate in 1986 and was followed by Bush and Clinton. Today, more is wrong with our culture than was the case in 1980. If the conservative political revival persists and gathers strength, we may see a long period of an antagonistic standoff between the political nation and its culture, on the one hand, and the culture of the elites, on the other.