CONSERVATIVE CLARITY
My favorite conservative,
William F. Buckley,
on William J. Bennett

Click here.

Buckley, ever conservative, ever wise, pronounces Bill Bennett politically dead. WFB does it sadly, but well, better articulating arguments I've already heard elsewhere. For the most part, I agree with his analysis, even of Bennett's critics. There is one section, though, that I want to comment on:

At root is a protest against the very credentials of virtue. And that isn't something being done by libertarians, it is the creeping vine of philosophical libertinism. There are people out there who don't want to say they are opposed to virtues, but who don't really want other people around to postulate the need for virtue. John Adams said 200 years ago that the American experiment would not succeed unless the people cultivated virtue. To say such a thing in modern times is privately disdained as officious piety. To have engaged in the practice of praising virtue and to have profited from the commercial returns of doing so is deemed doubly offensive.

I think that Buckley is right (no pun intended, of course) about "the creeping vine of philosophical libertinism." That is, I think that outside religion, in US mainstream culture, the concept of aspiring to a greater morality or greater justice is often scoffed at cynically; inside religion, virtue is often only paid lip service. The decades of materialistic, consumeristic, me-first philosophy propagandized toward the American people by massive corporations has left its indelible mark on the US psyche. Today, many, if not most, Americans, religious and secular alike, see morality as something that stands in the way of getting what they want, as inconvenient rules--"How can I invade Iraq and make it look justified?" or "How can I lay off all these workers and still sleep at night?" or "How can I humiliate my rival without looking bad?" It seems that much philosophical energy in America these days is directed at making the immoral become somehow moral. I stand with Buckley in support of virtue.

I also agree that there is probably a strain of this "philosophical libertinism" directed at Bennett. There has been some glee at his destruction. It is unfair and incorrect, however, to simply dismiss all of Bennett's critics in this way. Many who have criticized Bennett, including myself, do so from a position that supports and seeks a greater morality for America. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, for example, is clearly driven by a passion for justice and good. Katha Pollitt's devotion to justice goes back many years. Uber-blogger, Atrios, over at Eschaton pounded away at the Bennett story, but I know from Atrios' writings that his attacks are from a principled, righteous point of view. (By the way, I now know that Atrios is a "he;" he has referred, in passing, to a "Mrs. Atrios"--that's one mystery down...) Libertinism and morality exist side by side on both the left and the right. Buckley does himself a disservice by forgetting that devotion to that which is good knows no ideological boundaries.

I think that the problem is that the left and the right often tend to disagree on exactly what a virtue is--this disagreement is usually recast as an accusation that the other side is somehow amoral. It's okay to disagree: it's wrong to hurl unfounded accusations. I think that the entire political spectrum in the US needs to figure that out.

Link via Eschaton via The Rittenhouse Review.

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