My father, who was an English professor, once published an article entitled, “Does Grammar Checkers Work?” He ran the article — with the title — through a grammar checker before he published it.
Time Magazine has just published an article bearing the title, "Are America's Best Days Behind Us"? There is an eerie similarity between this title and the title of my father's article. In both cases, the posing of the question is a symptom of the answer.
But, in truth, it must be conceded that the question about America is more important than the one about grammar. And what is most disturbing about it is that far too few people see that the concern about America is, at the core, a moral concern. The Time article alludes to all the usual things: competition with China and India, students’ mathematics scores, national debt, and so forth. The author then adds,
But this misses the broader point. The Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, who has just written a book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, puts things in historical context: “For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps — competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.”
One must regret having to say it, but that more or less misses the point. “Killer apps” may be a clever metaphor, but it is also a telling one. My father in law, who was a veteran of World War II, used to talk about something he and his fellow veterans referred to as “moral fiber.” He talked about how, at one time, moral fiber was recognized as the indispensable ingredient for a serious soldier – or a serious citizen, for that matter. The description of this as an “app” has the ring of a grotesque metaphor.
None of the things mentioned above by the venerable Harvard historian appears to be conceived of as anything but a useful good — a bonum utile, as it was once termed–, as opposed to a noble good or a bonum honestum — something which is good in itself, in other words. Even the “rule of law” is indeed useful. But the obvious question is, “Useful for what?” To beat out China with our gross domestic product? To get more sources of diversion into our Ipods and Ipads?
We have forgotten the answer to this question. Even those who debate about particular points of morality seem often to fail to grasp well what is at stake. That is why such debates all too often degenerate into accusations about “your morality” versus mine.
The best philosophers, such as Plato, saw that there is a vast difference between being good at something and simply being good. The veterans my father in law knew were good at many things, but they too knew the difference between that and being good. They also knew that being good required work: not the kind of work that makes an “application,” but the kind of work that makes the man or the woman. But it will be impossible to understand what we mean by this “goodness,” if we fail to find its roots in something noble and worthy of our striving: something we do not make, but rather submit ourselves to.
Unfortunately, our civilization is nearing a crisis in its dilemma. On the one side is the still fashionable existentialism, which smiles condescendingly on the idea that there might be any source of our nobility in something better than ourselves – God, for example. It prefers the empty charm – the so-called “tragedy” – of our getting to make something from nothing; of “creating” our own values.
On the other side of the dilemma we find the reassertion of God’s sovereignty; but for lack of our willingness to think about that sovereignty in reasonable ways, through the rich heritage we had, we find instead, increasingly, a grotesque and violent representation of that sovereignty as all that remains to fill the void.
