NATIONAL MORALITY—MYTH OR REALITY?

By Edwin Cooney

“As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest -- but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often …we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Mythology distracts us everywhere…”— from President John F. Kennedy’s Commencement address at Yale University Monday, June 11th, 1962.

Sure, I’m like everyone else: I certainly enjoy the comfort of opinion more than I do the discomfort of dispassionate thought. (Sorry, Jack, I just had to add “dispassionate”!)

As I see it, one of today’s most powerful myths is that America was born “moral,” but recently has been disintegrating into amorality or even worse -- immorality brought on by secular humanist materialism aided by big government.

Question: What constitutes national morality or the lack of it? Is it government policy or is it primarily cultural? If it’s cultural, ought the central government be empowered to root out unhealthy elements from the body politic? The most effective government in rooting out crime, as far as I’m aware, was the former Soviet government. Now that evil and godless communism is gone, many say that the Russian mafia has taken over. Finally, who decides whether a nation has or hasn’t lost its soul—if indeed it even possesses one? Can you name a single nation throughout all human history -- monarchical, democratic, socialistic, communistic, autocratic, or even theocratic -- that has passed the morality test? I confess I can’t!

According to Holy Scripture, Ancient Israel, although founded under providence by Moses, was destroyed by Babylonia and by the Romans due to its wickedness. Another way of looking at the twice-destroyed Jewish theocracy is that twice the riches of God’s earthly kingdom were awarded to the materialistic societies of heathen Babylonia and pagan Rome. Apparently, not even a theocracy is sufficiently moral to stand the rigors of international greed.

Of course, what has to matter most to you and to me is American morality. What forces in our society ensure American morality or immorality? Was America more purely moral at its founding than it is today?

Traditionalists might argue that a government by and for “the people” constitutes moral government because it automatically reflects their values of family, church, and liberty.

Fair enough, but even at our founding when most states were linked to official churches, native Americans lived in the sights of soldiers’ muskets and occasionally snuggled under cholera-contaminated blankets distributed or, even worse, traded to them by greedy land speculators. Blacks at that time dwelt under chattel slavery—obviously an immoral institution. Yet America’s future was as golden as nineteenth century California and as noble as the charity of the American Red Cross.

As I see it, the tendency to label American society as moral or immoral constitutes one of those “myths” JFK referred to on that bright June day nearly forty-nine years ago. Our task as citizens is to conscientiously and objectively recall the numerous occasions when we’ve applied our best national traits -- patience during international crises, courage and bravery during wartime, generosity to others during natural disasters, and honesty, conscientious equality, and generosity in both our domestic and international relations. Application of such awareness will, in my view, effectively guard against the adoption of immoral laws.

If yesterday’s sins -- Native American genocide and black chattel slavery -- have been exchanged for religious degradation, abortion rights, and secular humanism, that’s a hell of a deal, if you ask me. Their existence may be more valuable as political issues than as dangers to you and to me. America has had issues such as the restoration of prayer in the public schools on its political agenda since 1964. Additionally, since 1991 the Supreme Court has had a “strict constructionalist” majority. Since 1995, liberals have had control of Congress for only five years. (There was a majority split in 2001 and 2002.) Self- proclaimed conservatives have occupied the presidency twenty of the thirty years that have passed since 1981. You may well ask why secular humanism’s “immoral” agenda has yet flourished? My guess is that it’s due, in part, to the fact that it is too valuable as a political issue on media talk shows as well as on the stump. It’s just as FDR once said to his aide Tommy (“the cork”) Corcoran back in the 1930s: “Tommy! I’ve decided that this matter can wait. I want it as an issue next year.” Even our sins can be politically useful!

Now, that’s no myth -- that’s bare knuckles political reality! In politics, voter indignation, if your side controls it, is more effective and longer-serving than voter satisfaction.

Come to think of it, if mythology distracts us everywhere, that’s just plain good politics!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY