Unconventional Thanksgiving Quote From G.K. Chesterton’s Autobiography, Chapter XVI: “The God With The Golden Key”

I have loved this quote for many years, and can scarcely think of a better–albeit unconventional–note for Thanksgiving than this one, from the salty rhetorical cleverness of G.K. Chesterton:

“… A whole generation has been taught to talk nonsense at the top of its voice about having ‘a right to life’ and ‘a right to experience’ and ‘a right to happiness.’ The lucid thinkers who talk like this generally wind up their assertion of all these extraordinary rights, by saying that there is no such thing as right and wrong.

It is a little difficult, in that case, to speculate on where their rights came from; but I, at least, leaned more and more to the old philosophy which said that their real rights came from where the dandelion came from; and that they will never value either [the rights or the flower] without recognising its source…

[But] the first thing the casual critic will say is ‘What nonsense all this is; do you mean that a poet cannot be thankful for grass and wild flowers without connecting it with theology; let alone your theology?’ To which I answer, ‘Yes; I mean he cannot do it without connecting it with theology, unless he can do it without connecting it with thought. If he can manage to be thankful when there is nobody to be thankful to, and no good intentions to be thankful for, then he is simply taking refuge in being thoughtless in order to avoid being thankless.’ But indeed the argument goes beyond conscious gratitude, and applies to any sort of peace or confidence or repose, even unconscious confidence or repose…”

Character for Congress in 2010 & Beyond: HONESTY

by Dale S. Westervelt

In my grandparents day, an honest person was considered to be a good person.  They were someone with high moral character, as honesty referred to truth-telling. Seventy years ago your word about a matter was your name–your family’s name–which, back then, meant something valuable.  This is not so any longer.  To be honest in our time means barely more than speaking with frankness (saying whatever is on one’s mind) or being vulnerable (sharing whatever is in one’s heart).

Any attempt to drag the highbrow relic of honesty–the character trait–forward into today’s culture strikes many as thin and wispy nostalgia.  It demonstrates a stubborn refusal to concede that the world has changed.   Norman Rockwell’s deceased icon is buried in a stack of faded magazines caked with cold dust in a dark attic.

Contemporary reality is that we live in a complex, technologically advanced, fast paced and globalized world.  So-called values are not things that are anchored to a person’s moral fiber so much as they are the carrots of wealth or fame or whatever else one finds aspirational.  I may value peace and quiet; you may value family and vacations.  What’s more, terms like good and honest mean different things to different people, and–even for them–are not static terms etched in the permanent ink of lexography.

The Character for Congress series has thus far taken up nearly half-dozen discrete values, e.g. humility, reverence, and respect.  This post will touch a bit upon honesty as a character trait, but will mostly cut a wider swath to address why Americans don’t relish character generally. To this end, I will carve three thin slices of nineteenth century intellectual history–two from the German philosopher Friedrich Neitzsche, and the other from the American philosopher William James.

From these slices I will build a veritable philosophy sandwich.  The center is William James’ premise that “truth” is not something objective, but is the subjective and practical utility of any idea to the individual that holds it. The two slivers of Neitzsche are on the outside, with “God is dead” on top, and his assertion that life is meaningless is on the bottom.  As you might imagine, it is best served cold!

The first layer was baked in 1882, when Neitzsche made the provocative claim that the god of Western Christianity was “dead” (See The Gay Science) Neitzsche was not implying that this god formerly existed and then suddenly did not.  The iconic German philosopher was asserting that the objective moral framework of Christianity was chimerical and, therefore, getting rid of Christianity would effectively liberate persons to make their own free and independent moral decisions.  Strip away the notion of an author and arbiter of morality and any universal moral code falls like a house of cards.  Universal morality foists upon otherwise free persons a slave mentality and, since god has never existed, followers of Christian moral values are being blindly oppressed to their own demise.  The implications of Neitzsche’s rejection of God and Christianity are not dissimilar to other atheists.  Morally, anything goes since there are not categories for good and bad, or right and wrong.

The second part of our sandwich, the meaty inside, is William James’ philosophy of pragmatism.  Like Neitzsche and many other philosophers in the nineteenth century, James rejected the notion that ideas could be objectively “true.”  One key difference is that, rather than creating his philosophy out of a rejection of morality, James’ grounding principle was regarding the usefulness or utility of any idea.  Therefore James would not reject religion wholesale.  He would claim that, to the extent that religious faith “worked” for different persons in various cultures, it would be useful and thereby be true for those persons.

Now, if I bite into just these two parts of the sandwich, here’s what I ingest: There is no god, no truth, no morality, and good ideas are only those that are subjectively useful in the most pragmatic sense.   This effectively paves the way for, just as an example, producers of snuff films to profit from radical exploitation.  These are movies that don’t just depict violence.   A producer recruits persons to play roles in a film that, unbeknownst to them, will actually include their being murdered on film.  The film will be sold on a black market for huge profit, and the producer saves money by not having to pay the deceased actors.  Remember, without objective morality there is nothing wrong with lying, cheating, exploitation or murder. And, there is the pure pragmatic benefit of financial windfall to the producer of the film. I am now dubious about both the taste and the healthfulness of this sandwich.

The third layer of our sandwich is baked from the same ingredients as the top layer, it is just baked a little longer.  This bottom sliver is Neitzsche’s philosophical conclusion that, without a transcendent moral being, life is meaningless.  Two things that I have long appreciated about Neitzsche are the clarity of his prose–as many philosophers spin out reams of unnavigable and convoluted tripe–and the straight forwardness of his logic.  Neitzsche’s logic here is nicely in concert with Plato, who taught that, without a transcendent reference point, no finite point can have any true or objective meaning.  It flows logically that, without a moral being that exists beyond or outside of human persons, there cannot be a moral code that is universal for all humankind, nor anything that could define the human life as having objective moral value.

This sandwich is now sitting on a plate in front of us.  What we have is no god and no morals. With these missing, we have only the self-defined usefulness of ideas and a life without meaning.  Lest the reader here conclude that this is nothing more than dredging up some of the content from their freshman Intro to Philosophy course, we might ask here whether this so far from reality?

Let us assume that not many people articulate these thoughts in these ways.  We can also easily conclude that very few go the entire distance with Neitzsche (and other ‘nihilists’ like Camus) in positing that, since life has no meaning, the most liberating act is suicide.

What the three layers provide, to most albeit unknowing adherents, is a blank canvas to create one’s own moral paradigm.  Consider the following examples of an articulated or implied morality.  Note that the following examples are referenced or carried out as though they were objective or self-evident.

- Ingrid Newkirk, the co-founder of PETA–in making the case that human life is not more valuable than any other kind of life–stated that, “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” (See Washingtonian Magazine, August 1986)
- Peter Singer, a Professor of Bio-Ethics at Princeton University, believes that both abortion and infanticide up to two years of age are perfectly reasonable choices.   (See Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 1979)
- Islamic suicide bombers believe that, in killing their perceived enemies, they will be rewarded in an afterlife. 
- Irish laureate George Bernard Shaw believed that, to eliminate the problem of society’s decline due to inferior persons breeding more rapidly than superior persons, there should be a selective extermination of the former–leading to his creation of the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

In the beginning of this post, I made the claim that honesty isn’t what it used to be, and went on to suggest that character no longer matters.  The sandwich was served up as merely three philosophical roots of the dissolution of character.  James’ pragmatism is, albeit unconsciously, a comparatively more common modus operandi today than is apprehending an objective and universal moral philosophy and using this as a rudder to guide social ethics and human behavior.  To the extent that this is true, the impact of the James’ academic philosophy is profound, as his ideas went from the precincts of academia to the unconscious thought process of common persons in day-to-day life in the one-hundred years since his death.

And whenever you hear or read about an invented moral paradigm or dilemma (e.g. it is a federal offense to harm an eagle egg while, legally, a fetus isn’t a human life) remember Neitzsche’s rejection of an objective moral code, his deduction that human life has no true value, and the blank moral canvas.  These philosophical roots are the unconscious but quite common operating principles for many in our day.  For clear-headed thinking on these themes read C. S. Lewis’ non-fiction works: Mere Christianity; The Screwtape Letters; The Weight of Glory; or Surprised by Joy.

Remember to prize honesty and goodness, to be a truth-teller, and to look for goodness and good character in others.  When you see it, comment to the perpetrator about the rarity and positive impact that high moral character has upon the lives of others.  We all benefit when we see goodness, show our appreciation for it, and attempt to imitate and perpetuate it with the people we know and love. And–as it relates to this series–consider the state of our republic were we to have good and honest men and women as our elected public servants. Let this vision serve as a guide in this and future election cycles, and believe that our country can yet again be a great place to live and to flourish. May it be so.

Special: “Character for Congress in 2010 & Beyond” SERIES: Part FIVE

By Dale S Westervelt

Here’s the whirlwind leading up to this post: The original two-party system of our federal government requires trust in order for both wings of the legislature to function distinctly and effectively. Trust requires good moral character, which is based on objective moral absolutes, not subjective moral preferences.

Post four in this series elaborated on this by suggesting that claims of political leaders either lying or being hypocrites imply the reality of objective moral standards, even if the claim itself is being made by one who rejects the notion of absolutes, and their cries of foul are purely for pragmatic political advantage. In other words, apart from an objective notion of truth, how could there possibly be meaningful concepts of lying and hypocrisy?

Samuel Adams stated the importance of moral integrity of public servants thusly: “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.” *

Today’s post makes the potentially thorny claim that the source of objective moral absolutes is the transcendent Judeo-Christian God of the Bible. The ancient philosopher Plato nicely noted that no finite point has any true and objective meaning apart from a transcendent reference point.

It is quite in vogue today to discredit the Christian faith of our nation’s founders. Those that do so are interested to suggest that America is not, and never has been a distinctly Christian nation. They are keen to point to Jefferson being a functioning deist, who maintained that the Judeo-Christian God created the earth and then effectively went asleep at the switch. The god of the deists had no role other than as the creator. Their god is the great clockmaker, who built the clock (universe), wound it up and let it run on its own from that point forward.

Most commonly these detractors make little to no reference to many of the other 39 signers of the constitution. Two quick points: first, the overwhelming majority of the framers were devout Christians, and held their faith to be seminally influential in their perspective on citizen’s liberty and their high view of moral character; and second, even the deists trace the origin of the universe, as well as the source of moral character, to the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible. Stated differently, deists would not suggest that either some other god or no god at all provided an explanation for the origin of the universe and humankind, nor for the source of moral values.

Some readers will remember this classic quote from G.K. Chesterton, which I employed last Thanksgiving as a stand-alone post.

“… A whole generation has been taught to talk nonsense at the top of its voice about having ‘a right to life’ and ‘a right to experience’ and ‘a right to happiness.’ The lucid thinkers who talk like this generally wind up their assertion of all these extraordinary rights, by saying that there is no such thing as right and wrong.

It is a little difficult, in that case, to speculate on where their rights came from; but I, at least, leaned more and more to the old philosophy which said that their real rights came from where the dandelion came from; and that they will never value either [the rights or the flower] without recognising its source…

[But] the first thing the casual critic will say is ‘What nonsense all this is; do you mean that a poet cannot be thankful for grass and wild flowers without connecting it with theology; let alone your theology?’ To which I answer, ‘Yes; I mean he cannot do it without connecting it with theology, unless he can do it without connecting it with thought. If he can manage to be thankful when there is nobody to be thankful to, and no good intentions to be thankful for, then he is simply taking refuge in being thoughtless in order to avoid being thankless.” **

In closing, and at the risk of seeming terrifically small-minded, this series has progressed through these connections: effective legislature with trust; trust with honesty; honesty with character; character with objective moral standards; objective moral standards with a transcendent moral source, i.e. the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible. And I continue to endorse “Character for Congress in 2010 and Beyond.”

* Wells, William V. The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams, 3 Vols., Boston, Little Brown and Company, 1865 (1:22)
** GK Chesterton, from his autobiography, Chapter XVI, The God With the Golden Key

Re-Post – Character for Congress in 2010 & Beyond: HONESTY

by Dale S. Westervelt

In my grandparents day, to be an honest person was to be a good person–someone with high moral character. Honesty–the character trait –connoted truth-telling, and was inextricably tied to a person’s trustworthiness. Fifty years ago yours or my word about a matter was our name–indeed our family’s name.

Yet any attempt to drag this relic forward into today’s culture strikes many as mere naive and crusty nostalgia. It’s a blind refusal to concede that the world has changed. The unrealistically simple life captured by Norman Rockwell is nothing more than a stack of long faded magazines housed in dusty boxes in the attic. The reality today is that we live in a complex, technologically advanced, fast paced and globalized world. So-called “values” are not things that are tied to a person’s moral make-up, so much as they are the “carrots” of wealth or upward mobility or fame. What’s more, some say, terms like good and honest can mean different things to different people, and are constantly evolving according to various evidences of cultural progress.

This post will make merely three observations about the implications of honesty–the character trait’s residence in the out-of-sight-out-of-mind attic. First, both atheism and privatized religion have a centripetal force that spins all things inward toward self, meaning that all values are untethered from a being or an idea extrinsic to the individual and are derived and held individually.

Merely one historical strand of this idea traces back to philosopher Friedrich Neitzsche, who advanced a thesis that objective moral values alienate and oppress the unique and free individual. The “God is dead” movement was authored by Neitzsche to make the case–not that God used to exist and now does not–that the classical conception of a transcendent moral deity is outmoded by an all-powerful essence of reality in the human’s will to power. This post will not advance a full-throated exposition of this nineteenth century German philosopher, but it will suggest that his thesis was very clearly conceived and artfully laid out. (See The Gay Science and Thus Spake Zarathustra as merely two of his works in regards to his god is dead thesis.) If, as the atheists suggest, there is no transcendent moral being, or if faith in a god (irrespective of which religion’s god) is purely a private matter, than all morality subjective moral preferences. Strip away the idea of an author and arbiter of morality and any universal moral code falls like a house of cards.

As an albeit mundane example that honesty isn’t what it used to be: last week in line at the local coffee shop I overhear the customer in front of me order a pastry. A young person behind the counter looks and reports that they don’t have this item. A moment later he says, “Oh, I lied,” and goes on to explain that the item was not in its usual spot, and sold her the scone and a whopping cup of caffeine with frothy milk.

But when and how has this phrase–”I lied”–become so comfortably employed as though it were synonymous with “I was mistaken,” or somesuch like. We may presume this is nothing more than a benign, if curious, word swap. Alternatively, I would posit that it is easier to think of oneself as a liar than as one who has any proneness for making mistakes.

But let’s cut a ultra thin slice of intellectual history here, tracing the societal impact of William James’ philosophical pragmatism one century after his death in 1910. James claimed that there was no such thing as an idea or a reality that is objectively, universally “true.” Truth, for James, refers to the purely practical utility of any idea to the individual who holds it. The ethic of “the ends justify the means” is a crystallized articulation of the premise of pragmatism (or utilitarianism) philosophy.

The case could be made that pragmatism is a more common modus operandi today than apprehending an objective and universal moral philosophy and using this as a guide for social ethics and human behavior. To the extent that this is true, the impact of the James’ academic philosophy is profound, as his ideas went from the precincts of academia to the unconscious thought process of common persons in day-to-day life. If all of this were reliably teased out in a much fuller essay, the case would conclude that, in a utilitarian culture it is more preferable to be thought of as competent or talented than honest or good. As James himself would say, competency has more “cash value” than honesty.

The second example that honesty has been stripped of its gravitas is that it rarely refers to a character trait. Many persons use the term as a synonym for either frankness or vulnerability. One person calls another person a filthy louse and consider it as though they had just been honest. Another person feels that they have been honest when they poured out what was truly on their heart.

(DISHONESTY IS ALMOST ALWAYS OUT OF SELF PRESERVATION.)

Re-Post: Musings on Democracy From GK Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy”

by Dale S. Westervelt

Last December I wrote a post that spelled out some consequences of incivility in public discourse, and redrew the framework of the founder’s elegant and efficient federal two-party infrastructure. I finished by casting a shell or outline of an imaginary–what I suggested to be an ideal–legislative process. It was a process that leverages rather than compromises the efficiency of the founders’ brilliant system. This post is similar in that it looks to an ideal as our aim or aspiration. This hefty clip from Chesteron’s classic Orthodoxy is taken from his chapter called The Ethics of Elfland. My abiding trust in the ideal, and growing distrust in the actual goings-on in Washington is very much in concert with Chesterton’s musings here.

“When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.”

Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.

I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother’s knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in [democracy]. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in [proponents of democracy].

I … have always believed in democracy, in the elementary … doctrine of a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation…

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one’s own love-letters or blowing one’s own nose.

These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves — the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed…”

Character for Congress in 2010 & Beyond: HONESTY

by Dale S. Westervelt

In my grandparents day, an honest person was considered to be a good person.  They were someone with high moral character, as honesty referred to truth-telling. Seventy years ago your word about a matter was your name–your family’s name–which, back then, meant something valuable.  Not so any longer.  To be honest in our time means barely more than speaking with frankness (saying whatever is on one’s mind) or being vulnerable (sharing whatever is in one’s heart).

Any attempt to drag the highbrow relic of honesty–the character trait–forward into today’s culture strikes many as thin and wispy nostalgia.  It demonstrates a stubborn refusal to concede that the world has changed.   Norman Rockwell’s deceased icon is buried in a stack of faded magazines caked with cold dust in a dark attic.

Contemporary reality is that we live in a complex, technologically advanced, fast paced and globalized world.  So-called values are not things that are anchored to a person’s moral fiber so much as they are the carrots of wealth or fame or whatever else one finds aspirational.  I may value peace and quiet; you may value family and vacations.  What’s more, terms like good and honest mean different things to different people, and–even for them–are not static terms etched in the permanent ink of lexography.

The Character for Congress series has thus far taken up nearly half-dozen discrete values, e.g. humility, reverence, and respect.  This post will touch a bit upon honesty as a character trait, but will mostly cut a wider swath to address why Americans don’t relish character generally. To this end, I will carve three thin slices of nineteenth century intellectual history–two from the German philosopher Friedrich Neitzsche, and the other from the American philosopher William James.

From these slices I will build a veritable philosophy sandwich.  The center is William James’ premise that “truth” is not something objective, but is the subjective and practical utility of any idea to the individual that holds it. The two slivers of Neitzsche are on the outside, with “God is dead” on top, and his assertion that life is meaningless is on the bottom.  As you might imagine, it is best served cold!

The first layer was baked in 1882, when Neitzsche made the provocative claim that the god of Western Christianity was “dead” (See The Gay Science) Neitzsche was not implying that this god formerly existed and then suddenly did not.  The German philosopher was asserting that the objective moral framework of Christianity was chimerical and, therefore, getting rid of Christianity would effectively liberate persons to make their own free and independent moral decisions.  Strip away the notion of an author and arbiter of morality and any universal moral code falls like a house of cards.  Universal morality foists upon otherwise free persons a slave mentality and, since god has never existed, followers of Christian moral values are being blindly oppressed to their own demise.  The implications of Neitzsche’s rejection of God and Christianity are not dissimilar to other atheists.  Morally, anything goes since there are not categories for good and bad, or right and wrong.

The second part of our sandwich, the meaty inside, is William James’ philosophy of pragmatism.  Like Neitzsche and many other philosophers in the nineteenth century, James rejected the notion that ideas could be objectively “true.”  One key difference is that, rather than creating his philosophy out of a rejection of morality, James’ grounding principle was regarding the usefulness or utility of any idea.  Therefore James would not reject religion wholesale.  He would claim that, to the extent that religious faith “worked” for different persons in various cultures, it would be useful and thereby be true for those persons.

Now, if I bite into just these two parts of the sandwich, here’s what I ingest: There is no god, no truth, no morality, and good ideas are only those that are subjectively useful in the most pragmatic sense.   This effectively paves the way for, just as an example, producers of snuff films to profit from radical exploitation.  These are movies that don’t just depict violence.   A producer recruits persons to play roles in a film that, unbeknownst to them, will actually include their being murdered on film.  The film will be sold on a black market for huge profit, and the producer saves money by not having to pay the deceased actors.  Remember, without objective morality there is nothing wrong with lying, cheating, exploitation or murder. And, there is the pure pragmatic benefit of financial windfall to the producer of the film. I am now dubious about both the taste and the healthfulness of this sandwich.

The third layer of our sandwich is baked from the same ingredients as the top layer, it is just baked a little longer.  This bottom sliver is Neitzsche’s philosophical conclusion that, without a transcendent moral being, life is meaningless.  Two things that I have long appreciated about Neitzsche are the clarity of his prose–as many philosophers spin out reams of unnavigable and convoluted tripe–and the straight forwardness of his logic.  Neitzsche’s logic here is nicely in concert with Plato, who taught that, without a transcendent reference point, no finite point can have any true or objective meaning.  It flows logically that, without a moral being that exists beyond or outside of human persons, there cannot be a moral code that is universal for all humankind, nor anything that could define the human life as having objective moral value.

This sandwich is now sitting on a plate in front of us.  What we have is no god and no morals. With these missing, we have only the self-defined usefulness of ideas and a life without meaning.  Lest the reader here conclude that this is nothing more than dredging up some of the content from their freshman Intro to Philosophy course, we might ask here whether this so far from reality?

Let us assume that not many people articulate these thoughts in these ways.  We can also easily conclude that very few go the entire distance with Neitzsche (and other ‘nihilists’ like Camus) in positing that, since life has no meaning, the most liberating act is suicide.

What the three layers provide, to most albeit unknowing adherents, is a blank canvas to create one’s own moral paradigm.  Consider the following examples of an articulated or implied morality.  Note that the following examples are referenced or carried out as though they were objective or self-evident.

- Ingrid Newkirk, the co-founder of PETA–in making the case that human life is not more valuable than any other kind of life–stated that, “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” (See Washingtonian Magazine, August 1986)

- Peter Singer, a Professor of Bio-Ethics at Princeton University, believes that both abortion and infanticide up to two years of age are perfectly reasonable choices.   (See Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 1979)

- Islamic suicide bombers believe that, in killing their perceived enemies, they will be rewarded in an afterlife. 

- Irish laureate George Bernard Shaw believed that, to eliminate the problem of society’s decline due to inferior persons breeding more rapidly than superior persons, there should be a selective extermination of the former–leading to his creation of the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

In the beginning of this post, I made the claim that honesty isn’t what it used to be, and went on to suggest that character no longer matters.  The sandwich was served up as merely three philosophical roots of the dissolution of character.  James’ pragmatism is, albeit unconsciously, a comparatively more common modus operandi today than is apprehending an objective and universal moral philosophy and using this as a rudder to guide social ethics and human behavior.  To the extent that this is true, the impact of the James’ academic philosophy is profound, as his ideas went from the precincts of academia to the unconscious thought process of common persons in day-to-day life in the one-hundred years since his death.

And whenever you hear or read about an invented moral paradigm or dilemma (e.g. it is a federal offense to harm an eagle egg while, legally, a fetus isn’t a human life) remember Neitzsche’s rejection of an objective moral code, his deduction that human life has no true value, and the blank moral canvas.  These philosophical roots are the unconscious but quite common operating principles for many in our day.  For clear-headed thinking on these themes read C. S. Lewis’ non-fiction works: Mere Christianity; The Screwtape Letters; The Weight of Glory; or Surprised by Joy.

Remember to prize honesty and goodness, to be a truth-teller, and to look for goodness and good character in others.  When you see it, comment to the perpetrator about the rarity and positive impact that high moral character has upon the lives of others.  We all benefit when we see goodness, show our appreciation for it, and attempt to imitate and perpetuate it with the people we know and love. And–as it relates to this series–consider the state of our republic were we to have good and honest men and women as our elected public servants. Let this vision serve as a guide in this and future election cycles, and believe that our country can yet again be a great place to live and to flourish. May it be so.

Re-Post: Allegory of Good and Bad Government

By Dale S Westervelt

In the Summer of 2007 my wife and I spent nearly two weeks in Florence and the glorious Tuscan countryside. At that time she was very pregnant with our fourth little one, and we still relish our memories of the castles, olive trees, vineyards, statues, museums, and old world wines and art and restaurants. As I write this post my singular regret is that we did not get to the very nearby historic village of Siena. There, splayed across three walls of a governor’s meeting room in the Palazzo Pubblico, is the fresco work of the early fourteenth century artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti.

After the paint dried in Siena, fast-forward seven centuries: In the middle 1990’s Oxford University Press commenced publication of a series of short-format monographs that would provide, in effect, primers on a wide range of topics in the Humanities. Their “Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction,” opens using the Renaissance artist Lorenzetti’s thoughtful and vivid three-wall rendering of the effects of government upon the life of its citizens, commonly called the Allegory of Good and Bad Government.

“What Lorenzetti’s frescos do is first of all to depict the nature of good and bad government respectively by means of figures who represent the qualities that rulers ought and ought not to have, and then to show the effects of the two kinds of government on the lives of ordinary people. So in the case of good government we see the dignified ruler dressed in rich robes and sitting on his throne, surrounded by figures representing the virtues of Courage, Justice, Magnanimity, Peace, Prudence, and Temperance. Beneath him stand a line of citizens encircled by a long rope the ends of which are tied to the ruler’s wrist, symbolizing the harmonious binding together of ruler and people. As we turn to the right we see Lorenzetti’s portrayal of the effects of good government first in the city and then in the countryside. The city is ordered and wealthy: we see artisans plying their trades, merchants buying and selling goods, nobles riding gaily decorated horses; in one place a group of dancers join hands in a circle. Beyond the city gate a well-dressed lady rides out to hunt, passing on the way a plump saddleback pig being driven in to market; in the countryside itself peasants till the earth and gather in the harvest. In case any careless viewer should fail to grasp the fresco’s message, it is spelt out in a banner held aloft by a winged figure representing Security:

‘Without fear every man may travel freely and each may till and sow, so long as this commune still maintains this lady sovereign, for she has stripped the wicked of all power.’

The fresco on the other side, representing evil government, is less well preserved, but its message is equally plain: a demonic ruler surrounded by vices like Avarice, Cruelty, and Pride, a city under military occupation, and a barren countryside devastated by ghostly armies. Here the inscription held by the figure of fear reads:

‘Because each seeks only his own good, in this city Justice is subjected to tyranny; wherefore along this road nobody passes without fearing for his life, since there are robberies outside and inside the city gates.’

There is no better way to understand what political philosophy is and why we need it than by looking at Lorenzetti’s magnificent mural.” (by David Miller, Oxford University Press, pp. 2-3)

The Oxford primer goes on to point out three points that Lorenzetti’s work makes for laypersons regarding what may otherwise seem to be a purely academic theme like political science.

1. Good and Bad Government Profoundly Effect the Quality of Human Lives: Lorenzetti’s frescos show how the rule of justice and other civic virtues allow “ordinary people to work, trade, hunt, dance, and generally do all of those things that enrich human existence…[and, alternatively] tyranny breeds poverty and death…[therefore] it really makes a difference in our lives whether we are governed well or badly.” (ibid.)

2. Our Government’s Form is Not Predetermined: The primer asks rhetorically why the mural was painted in the first place. The Sala dei Nove (Room of the Nine), in the Siena public square, was the meeting room of the rotating group of wealthy merchant governors. The mural served to remind these men—and many travelers and art historians over the centuries—of their civic responsibility to govern the people responsibly to preserve their lives, their liberty, and their happiness. The vivid portrayal of evil government was to be a sober reminder of the outcome of all manner of vice and the consequence of dereliction of their duties.

3. We Can Know What Distinguishes Between Good Government and Bad: Unlike academic disciplines of math and science, which rely on methods and formulas to arrive at facts, we commonly think about politics as residing in the realm of opinions and preferences. Oxford’s guide refers in this section to ‘political knowledge.’ “The frescos are meant to be instructive: they are meant to teach both rulers and their citizens how to achieve the kind of life they wanted.” (p.3)

There is very much more to say in this, already uncharacteristically long post, but I shall refrain (for now). Dr. Miller completely drew me into this phenomenally thoughtful and talented Renaissance artist. Both Lorenzetti and Dr. Miller artfully use the frescos to illustrate the importance of private citizens being mindful about the implications of good and bad government upon our day-to-day lives. I doff my cap to both of them.

Character for Congress in 2010 & Beyond: HOPE

“It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth — and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.” — Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775

by Dale S. Westervelt

The renowned philosopher Stanley Fish penned an inventive parable about two explorers deep in the wilderness when they happened upon a perfectly manicured garden and traded their impressions. The first one who saw the perfect patch expressed his amazement that anyone would trek to such a far-flung spot in order to plant and tend an albeit exquisite garden.

The other explorer scoffed at what he considered to be a preposterous notion. His surprise and wonder was that such a finely designed garden would grow naturally–even wondering out loud whether they were the first persons ever to admire it. Back and forth they argued. To settle the matter they set up a stakeout and took shifts day and night watching for the alleged gardener.

After three days of futility the skeptic asked the believer how he felt about his premise. “I still believe there’s a gardener,” he exclaimed, “but one who is most likely invisible.” After some deliberation–still at an impasse–they employed their ingenuity in order to devise methods for detecting an invisible gardener, and again commenced their stakeout.

Three days later, still nothing. The skeptic inquired, what gives now? His blithely hopeful companion responded by reinventing the gardener in order to reasonably explain how each of their methods wouldn’t have been effectual. “But, what remains of your original assertion?” replied the skeptic. “Tell me the difference between this invisible and endlessly re-definable gardener and a gardener that exists only in your own mind? In fact, what’s the difference between this gardener and no gardener at all?”

Fish’s yarn has been used to press the point that an object of our faith must be tied to something real, unseparated from verifiable truth, in order for the believer to have assurance–something that blind or empty faith cannot provide. The same may be said regarding hope.

So, to cut to the chase: As I write this post I am wondering whether there is any hope for a substantial concept of hope today, or has it grown too thin and wispy to safely animate those who hold onto it?

In common parlance hope generally boils down to wishful thinking–I hope it doesn’t rain next May for my cousin’s wedding. It refers to a desired outcome, while the likelihood of its occurrence is unknowable, and we are mostly without the ability to affect it. I can hope the Dodgers win the world series. The best I can do is follow their progress and wait to see what happens.

Wishful thinking isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be quite wonderful, exciting, and fun. The point is that our understanding of hope functions almost entirely under the umbrella of happy wishes.

In a political context, hope may be employed as a slogan or part of an election campaign promise, but left to stand alone without a stated object. In this case it is assumed to be an implicitly positive message–a good thing of itself–irrespective of whether there is any specific outcome to hope for, or whether a thing hoped for is real, and good, and attainable.

Scholar and writer C. S. Lewis was one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century–or any other century–having completed (with distinction) three doctorate degrees at Oxford University in the same time-frame that other students needed to complete one. As an avowed atheist, Lewis set out to write a scholarly work disproving the historic claims of the Christian religion. In so doing he became so utterly persuaded of the overwhelming historic evidence that he became a passionate defender of the essence of the Christian religion for the rest of his life. Time Magazine, in September of 1941, referred to Lewis as “one of the most influential spokesmen for Christianity in the English-speaking world.”

That said, the classic Christian concept of hope has more gravitas than dreams and wishes. The writer of the Bible’s book of Hebrews refers to Christian hope as “sure and certain” and an “anchor for the soul.” (6:19) This hope connotes expectation of an outcome that is supremely good, and is rooted in history and truth so as to be reliable. Hope of this kind can gladden the heart and animate the soul of the one who holds onto it in earnest.

So, my wish is that hope can be disentangled from its synonym role with wishful thinking. This will happen when we use it sparingly to refer to things that are reliably true, good and attainable.

Notes From The Other Side of the World

by Dale S. Westervelt

This week I returned from my first trip to India. To paint my impressions with a broom, I found India to be a delightfully friendly country, with exquisitely zesty food, glorious natural beauty, and–everywhere I looked– I saw a nation ravaged by poverty.

According to a World Bank estimate from 2005, 42% of the Indian people were living below the international poverty line which, at the time was less than $1.25 per day. More recent studies suggest that these numbers have come down, dropping by as much as 10 to 12 percentage points, to nearly one-third of a nation that, at 1.15 billion, is second only to China in terms of the most populous countries in the world. Now consider that India’s land mass is a mere 33% of China’s and you begin to see how existing problems with infrastructure and poverty are compounded by their rapid population growth and overcrowding.

During my eight-day visit, in conversations with the many Indians I met, both in the city and up north near the Brahmaputra River, any mention of the Indian government was quickly followed by their reference to profound and systemic “corruption.” It is so deeply entrenched into the system that seemingly everyone knows that the ruling class routinely, unabashedly “skims” money, and are brazenly greedy and rich. Everyone I spoke with agreed that they were effectively powerless to push back against the tyranny of the ruling class.

In a July 2008 Washington Times story, writer Emily Wax noted that, ‘”few dispute that corruption has stalled development in India. Bribery has made it all the more difficult to bolster a flagging infrastructure and feed a country with more malnourished children than any other in the world. Reports surfaced…that politicians had allegedly siphoned off hundreds of thousands of dollars from a $2 billion program to feed schoolchildren.” She goes on to note that “nearly a fourth of the 540 Parliament members face criminal charges, including human trafficking, immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder.” (Wax, Emily. 24 July 2007, With India, the Bad Gets Worse, Washington Times)

For several months, CTE has focused on the need for our nation’s public servants to be persons of high moral character. In India we see a powerful example of this principle in reverse. The abject immorality and systemic corruption within the Indian Parliament leads to unconscionable tyranny and exploitation.

Last Fall CTE did a post on the exquisite Renaissance fresco by artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti* that was, in essence, an allegory of the effects of good and of bad government upon the lives of the citizenry. The fresco portrays that where there are prudent and trustworthy leaders, the people in both the city and the countryside thrive in their work, their family life, and their leisure activity. (*See “Good & Bad Government: An Artful Allegory”)

Alternatively, where there is avarice and cruelty of the public servants, the city is under the thumb of military occupation and the countryside is pallid, dead, and barren. In his rendering of the effects of bad government, Lorenzetti portrays a character named Greed who carries a sign with this inscription: ‘Because each (government official) seeks only his own good, in this city Justice is subjected to tyranny; wherefore along this road nobody passes without fearing for his life, since there are robberies outside and inside the city gates.’

In closing, “corruption” only captures one aspect of the problem. The greedy “skimming” is corruption indeed, but this is vile, wicked and cruel. Remember it is not merely that the greed is wrought while hundreds of millions of the Indian people are impoverished. This chronic behavior exacerbates the plight of these human persons that live on the streets with trash, wild dogs, cows, goats, heat, mosquitos, rain, bugs, and snakes. It is the fruit of rulers (not public servants) functioning as though they have no soul. No conscience. Regrettably, this story is not a mere tragi-drama from the pen of a thoughtful screenwriter. It is a chronicle of the day-to-day life for persons living in an otherwise magnificent country that, according to projections, will be the most largely populated in the world within 20 years. It is a horrible story of reality in present-day India.

I loved my visit to India, as I made new friends there, and delighted in their fantastic cuisine. And I shall now pray that one day their leaders will be people of honor and high moral character to steward India to become a great nation where the Indian people–in the city and the countryside–are nourished, healthy, working, thriving, free, and happy.

Character for Congress in 2010 & Beyond: REVERENCE

By Dale S. Westervelt

“The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of Heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At his feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast—archangels—their heads level with his ankle-bone.” –Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

The previous post on Respect served as a ladder that leads up to the elevated floor of this exhibit—the nearly extinct value of Reverence. As a refresher, two key points on respect are worth reiterating. First, like all moral principles, respect must be learned and cultivated by employing good models and great encouragement, ideally from an early age. Second, the basis for respecting others is that God created all persons with self-evidently equal dignity, as well as with the unalienable rights stipulated by our Founding Fathers. Respect is not related to privilege or to individual achievement. God made the line worker, the Rhodes scholar, the neurosurgeon, the newborn baby, the withering grandmother, the Senator, the grocer, the Christian, the Jew, the Muslim, and—if you can believe this—the Democrat, the Republican, and the Independent.

One caveat: an individual may forfeit their rights to freedom of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by breaking the law and being subject to incarceration. Likewise, one may compromise their dignity by, for instance, lying or cheating. While these aren’t always criminal offenses, they reap for the wrongdoer a diminished respect from those who’ve been wronged. This caveat shall not be treated here beyond pointing to the notable asterisk in our premise that ‘everyone deserves our respect.’

Think of reverence as an exalted form of respect—which explains the use of the ladder. Reverence is reserved for God and persons who accomplish grand and noble feats. People who know me may respect me as a husband, a father, a churchman, a patriot, or some suchlike. I did not, however, bravely march on the crimson-stained soil of Trenton or Camden or Yorktown. Nor did I nobly draft an enduring document of liberty for millions of persons lasting hundreds of years. These highly noble ambitions and achievements require that we maintain a limited storehouse of reverence for the honorable men who found our blessed republic.

Whereas respect is accorded generously, reverence is much more sparing. Even in times when reverence is not effectively extinct, very few persons deserve its conferment. Great, noble, selfless, heroic, and grand feats warrant this rare bow to exalted dignity and honor. We would be a VERY different culture today if we esteemed and cultivated both respect and reverence.

The need for a conscious reclamation of these values is starkly obvious to those with the eyes to notice their conspicuous and compromising absence. Stroll through most any aisle in your local video store and count the number of films that you even vaguely suspect are emblems of honesty, goodness, greatness, and nobleness. The content of films is merely one product of our culture that is both a cause and an effect of a long, steady evaporation of moral goodness. Think of the last one, two, or three films that play to the very best parts of our nature. There are whole genres of film that consciously produce fantastical portrayals of the human heart as a blackened organ manufacturing only base activity like debauchery, malice, and brutality. Please don’t miss the point, as it is NOT even a remotely subtle indictment of Hollywood greed and profit. That is a potentially interesting topic for different writer with a different purpose, but it is not relevant here. My point is more akin to: ‘we are what we eat’, or ‘garbage in, garbage out.’

As a practical matter, this value will not be rediscovered by tapping reverence into a search engine on Google or Amazon and poring over the results. This will produce an insubstantial bibliography. More importantly, this approach will be as effectual as window-shopping for a motorcycle. We will benefit greatly by reading and watching material that fuels us with inspiration. I’m no prude, but Saw IV will never inspire me to respect my neighbor, nor to revere the Framers, let alone the Creator.

Happily, wholesome, inspirational mind and heart fuel consumption seems notably on the increase. Works on the Framers and the Constitution are flying off the online bookshelves in extraordinary numbers. This is a very good sign—especially in a time when good signs are sparse and as welcome as a cool spring in the Saharan desert.

Consider these words by Paul of Tarsus, a first century hero of mine: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8)