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Listening To The People Is A Virtue
Commentary
By James G. Wiles, For The Bulletin
In 1943, brooding on the causes of the fall of France to Nazi Germany, the British writer W. Somerset Maugham penned a little piece for Redbook called “Virtue.”
Virtus, the Latin word from which our word “virtue” derives, means “strength.” Knowing that adds insight to Mr. Maugham’s argument. Because, he says, what caused the sudden collapse of France in 1940 was a lack of virtue among French leaders and voters. William Shirer, in his Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), reached the same conclusion.
To most French voters, politics was a “dirty business” they wanted no part of. So, they failed to inform themselves and to participate in elections or, if they did, to vote disinterestedly and in the national interest. The result was a nation ripe for defeat because it was already hollowed out from within.
The French example, Mr. Maugham wrote, showed how leaving government to the pros was “completely wrong. I know now that no one can afford to stand aside from the political life of his time…[I]n the final analysis, democracy depends on the virtue of the individual. We shall not fulfill our political obligation unless we have integrity; and if we do not fulfill our political obligations, democracy is doomed.”
Mr. Maugham called for teaching the virtue of political obligation – “civics” – in the schools. He quoted Abraham Lincoln: “[w]hile the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government.”
I’m reminded of all this because I’m struck, after five weeks in Europe, by the reaction of the Obama Administration and Democratic Congressional leaders to their defeat in the Massachusetss U.S. Senate election. Startlingly, it mimics the attitude, as I observed it, of elites there toward their own electorates.
That attitude is: we know better. Such paternalism – and a willingness to make backroom deals to circumvent the voters - is how the European Union Project has been foisted on the unwilling peoples of Europe.
Polls show that most Europeans oppose the EU. Given a chance to vote on it, French, Irish and Danish voters nixed it. But the will of the people has been ignored. The EU Project presses on.
Similarly, faced with a large-scale Muslim influx, many Europeans want: (a) an end to legal immigration from Muslim and African countries, (b) the expulsion of illegal immigrants already there, (c) reinstitution of the death penalty and (d) a reassertion of Europe’s linguistic,
religious and cultural identity. The EU elites say no. The people are wrong or misinformed.
Sound familiar?
Larry P. Arndt, the president of Hillsdale College, has addressed the source of this problem of the legitimacy of our political leaders (of both parties) in an important recent speech. Dr. Arndt asserts that the source of our current danger is that the President and most government and political leaders are, for all their training and academic credentials, badly educated. They’ve been taught the wrong first principles.
The premise of our system of government, Dr. Arndt says, is the need to place limits on government’s power. Where did this come from? It comes from the Founders’ belief in the existence of certain absolute truths.
“America’s founders,” he explains, “understood themselves to be bound and limited by something higher.” The Constitution’s creation of a limited federal government can only be understood by viewing the Constitution through the lens of the Declaration of Independence. “[I]t is precisely this understanding,” Dr. Arndt says, “which is missing from our political leadership today.”
The Founders posited that a just government will only endure if it’s based on the natural law – “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” as the Declaration puts it. That meant limited government. By contrast, Dr. Arndt points out, “once you deny the existence of absolute truth, the definition of ‘good’ becomes subjective…[T]he only standard of behavior is what we want – ‘we,’ in the political sense, meaning the government or the bureaucracy…It reduces politics not to right, but to force.”
For that reason, Mr. Obama and his allies view the Declaration and the Constitution as “an impediment to progress.” They believe, instead, that “government [i]s a means by which they can do marvelous things, changing society for the better in countless and unlimited ways.”
The end result? “[A] bullying spirit” infesting the current Administration which “is becoming ever more pervasive.”
To stop it, Dr. Arndt (speaking on October 19, 2009 - three months before Scott Brown’s election) says, voters need “to see in this the despotism that it is, and to rise up and repudiate it.” Longer term, it’s necessary “to replace leaders who have bad educations with leaders who have good educations.”
Perhaps, perhaps the Rising has begun.
O Lord, give us strength. That is, give us virtue.
Virtus, the Latin word from which our word “virtue” derives, means “strength.” Knowing that adds insight to Mr. Maugham’s argument. Because, he says, what caused the sudden collapse of France in 1940 was a lack of virtue among French leaders and voters. William Shirer, in his Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), reached the same conclusion.
To most French voters, politics was a “dirty business” they wanted no part of. So, they failed to inform themselves and to participate in elections or, if they did, to vote disinterestedly and in the national interest. The result was a nation ripe for defeat because it was already hollowed out from within.
The French example, Mr. Maugham wrote, showed how leaving government to the pros was “completely wrong. I know now that no one can afford to stand aside from the political life of his time…[I]n the final analysis, democracy depends on the virtue of the individual. We shall not fulfill our political obligation unless we have integrity; and if we do not fulfill our political obligations, democracy is doomed.”
Mr. Maugham called for teaching the virtue of political obligation – “civics” – in the schools. He quoted Abraham Lincoln: “[w]hile the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government.”
I’m reminded of all this because I’m struck, after five weeks in Europe, by the reaction of the Obama Administration and Democratic Congressional leaders to their defeat in the Massachusetss U.S. Senate election. Startlingly, it mimics the attitude, as I observed it, of elites there toward their own electorates.
That attitude is: we know better. Such paternalism – and a willingness to make backroom deals to circumvent the voters - is how the European Union Project has been foisted on the unwilling peoples of Europe.
Polls show that most Europeans oppose the EU. Given a chance to vote on it, French, Irish and Danish voters nixed it. But the will of the people has been ignored. The EU Project presses on.
Similarly, faced with a large-scale Muslim influx, many Europeans want: (a) an end to legal immigration from Muslim and African countries, (b) the expulsion of illegal immigrants already there, (c) reinstitution of the death penalty and (d) a reassertion of Europe’s linguistic,
religious and cultural identity. The EU elites say no. The people are wrong or misinformed.
Sound familiar?
Larry P. Arndt, the president of Hillsdale College, has addressed the source of this problem of the legitimacy of our political leaders (of both parties) in an important recent speech. Dr. Arndt asserts that the source of our current danger is that the President and most government and political leaders are, for all their training and academic credentials, badly educated. They’ve been taught the wrong first principles.
The premise of our system of government, Dr. Arndt says, is the need to place limits on government’s power. Where did this come from? It comes from the Founders’ belief in the existence of certain absolute truths.
“America’s founders,” he explains, “understood themselves to be bound and limited by something higher.” The Constitution’s creation of a limited federal government can only be understood by viewing the Constitution through the lens of the Declaration of Independence. “[I]t is precisely this understanding,” Dr. Arndt says, “which is missing from our political leadership today.”
The Founders posited that a just government will only endure if it’s based on the natural law – “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” as the Declaration puts it. That meant limited government. By contrast, Dr. Arndt points out, “once you deny the existence of absolute truth, the definition of ‘good’ becomes subjective…[T]he only standard of behavior is what we want – ‘we,’ in the political sense, meaning the government or the bureaucracy…It reduces politics not to right, but to force.”
For that reason, Mr. Obama and his allies view the Declaration and the Constitution as “an impediment to progress.” They believe, instead, that “government [i]s a means by which they can do marvelous things, changing society for the better in countless and unlimited ways.”
The end result? “[A] bullying spirit” infesting the current Administration which “is becoming ever more pervasive.”
To stop it, Dr. Arndt (speaking on October 19, 2009 - three months before Scott Brown’s election) says, voters need “to see in this the despotism that it is, and to rise up and repudiate it.” Longer term, it’s necessary “to replace leaders who have bad educations with leaders who have good educations.”
Perhaps, perhaps the Rising has begun.
O Lord, give us strength. That is, give us virtue.
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