Posted on 11/19/2001 6:02:04 AM PST by walden
Why West Is Best Secrets — or rather, obvious ingredients — of the Good Society.
By Paul Johnson, the British journalist and historian, is the author of many books, including A History of Christianity and A History of the Jews. From the December 3, 2001, issue of National Review
No such thing as a perfect society exists in the world or ever will. But the Good Society can and does emerge from time to time, and is far more likely to exist within the orbit of the Western system than in any other. Why is this? To begin with, consider the historic blend of two valuable but imperfect and distinct moral/legal systems — the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian — which together are much more than the sum of their parts. All of us desire moral order. All of us wish for justice. The chief problem that faces a civilization is how to translate morality and justice into a workable system of law. The Greeks took legal concepts from numerous ancient societies, notably the Medes and Persians, but they brought to the science of law the spirit of philosophic inquiry, their own unique gift to humanity. They probed the nature of justice and the validity of morals, and thus infused law-making with a new dynamic: the endless quest for truth, viability, and endurance.
The Romans, in turn, built on this method, evolving a code that worked effectively over the world's largest and longest-lasting empire, enduring in one form or another for two millennia. What the Romans struggled towards was the notion of rule by law, rather than by mere men, and this involved the supremacy of a political constitution, which men, however powerful, were obliged to obey. The attempt ultimately failed, Rome became an oriental dictatorship of god-emperors, the rule of law collapsed, and, in due course, so did Roman civilization itself, in both its Western and Byzantine forms.
However, from the 5th and 6th centuries onwards, Roman notions of law and its rule were reinforced and transformed by Judeo-Christianity. The Jews were as devoted to law as the Romans. They saw the law as God-made, and under its rule all, from kings and high priests to shepherds, were equal: That is why the great 1st-century Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, called Judaism a "theocratic democracy." The Christians took over the principle of equality under the moral law and applied it to both the law codes of the Germanic north, based upon tribal consultations, and those of the Romance south, based upon Roman digests. The clergy evolved their own canon law and, between the 11th and the 16th centuries, there was a struggle between secular and clerical systems. The result was a felicitous compromise: neither theocratic law (as in Islamic states), nor wholly secular law, since the codes recognized natural law (as interpreted by Christianity) as the basis of all justice.
The rule of law was not established in the West without conflict. The constitutional struggle that produced in 1215 the Magna Carta, the first English Statute of the Realm (still in force), the English Civil War of 1640-60, and the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, the American Revolution of the 1770s and 1780s, producing the first modern written constitution, and the French Revolution of 1789, leading to the creation of the Napoleonic law code (both these last, as amended, still in force) are all episodes in the successful effort to make even kings and governments subject to the rule of law. The process continues, the latest salient event being the collapse of the supra-legal Communist dictatorship in Russia in 1991 and subsequent attempts, as yet incomplete, to establish the rule of law for the first time in Russia and its devolved territories.
From this long history, it has become evident that equality in law cannot be finally ensured without the mass participation of the public. But it is important to understand that the rule of law must be established first before democracy can successfully evolve. That is the great political lesson of Western civilization. It explains why democracy has quickly collapsed in all those (mainly Third World) countries where the rule of law was weak or nonexistent. A notable exception has been India, which — with all its weaknesses — still maintains democracy because the rule of law, thanks to the genius of Macaulay, took root there under British rule.
Where the rule of law exists, continually reinforced by an evolving democracy, liberty too takes root. The point was succinctly made by Thomas Hobbes, who, together with his follower John Locke, was the determining political philosopher in the evolution of both the British and the U.S. constitutions. "The silence of the laws is the freedom of the subject," wrote Hobbes: Where the law does not specifically prohibit, the citizen is free to do as he pleases. In unfree or Oriental societies, the assumption is reversed, and the freedom to do any individual action depends on favor, tradition (as interpreted by the absolute ruler or his agents), or corruption.
The freedom enjoyed in Western society under the rule of law and constitutional government explains both the quality of its civilization and its wealth. In the early Middle Ages, Islamic societies enjoyed some freedom in transmuting the Greeks' knowledge and spirit of inquiry, but this came to an end in the 13th century, which was precisely the point when the Western university system took off. Where the quest for knowledge is relatively, and now almost absolutely, unrestrained, the public benefit will be great, especially where the certainty of the law ensures that knowledge is rewarded. This is exactly the combination that is the foundation of wealth-creation.
Society in the West was establishing a consistent pattern of wealth-making even in the Middle Ages. From the 15th century, two factors — the invention of double-entry bookkeeping and of printing from movable type — were joined by six others, all consequences of the rule of law and of (virtual) equality under the law. These were the invention of the legal corporation (later including the limited-liability company and the trust); the development of a clear legal doctrine of marriage and inheritance; the invention of freehold in real estate and of banks operating as sure deposits for liquid wealth (both serving as the basis for lending and investment in mercantile and industrial enterprise); the development of copyright law; the inability of government to confiscate or tax individual property except by due process; and, finally, the invention of an immense range of legal devices, from commercial and personal insurance to stock exchanges (to promote, protect, maximize, and employ savings efficiently).
From these dozen or so advantages and their interaction, capitalism evolved. It is not, strictly speaking, an "ism," but a process of nature, which at a certain state of human development — the rule of law and a measure of personal freedom being the most important ingredients — occurs spontaneously, as millions of ordinary people go about their business in as efficient a manner as they know how. It is, then, a force of nature, which explains its extraordinary fecundity, adaptability, and protean diversity. It is as much a product of Western civilization as the university and the library, the laboratory and the cinema, relativity theory and psychotherapy. Coca-Cola and McDonald's are not alternatives to the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Public Library: They are all four products of a wealth-creating and knowledge-producing process based on freedom and legal certainty.
Moreover, because capitalism is based on human nature, not dogma, it is self-correcting. The freedom of the market enables these corrections to be made all the time, to short- and long-term problems. The expression "the crisis of capitalism" is therefore misleading. Capitalism moves through continual crises, major and minor, absorbing their lessons and so continually increasing productivity and living standards in the long run.
Indeed it is the protean ability of Western civilization to be self-critical and self-correcting — not only in producing wealth but over the whole range of human activities — that constitutes its most decisive superiority over any of its rivals. And it is protean not least in its ability to detect what other societies do better, and incorporate such methods into its own armory. All the other systems in the world, notably the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Indian, have learned much from the West in turn, and benefited thereby. The Islamic world has been the least willing to adopt the West's fundamental excellences. That is why it remains poor (despite its wealth of raw materials), unfree, and unhappy. Its states are likely to have uneasy relations with the West until Islam reforms itself, embraces the rule of law, introduces its own form of democracy, and so becomes a protean player in the modern world.
"I found the self-congradulatory tone to be infuriating. I still do."
Interestingly, that's exactly what I liked about it-- you call the tone "self-congratulatory", whereas I would characterize it as self-confident. I think the one, great virtue of western Victorian society (not only in Britain, but here as well) was its utter, unquestioning self-confidence. The response of the British authorities in India when some Indians said that the practice of burning the widow on the dead man's funeral pyre was "our custom", was, in essence, the practice of hanging by the neck until dead people who do such things is OUR custom. You practice your custom, and we'll practice our custom. They didn't argue about it, they just enforced civilized values.
Today, we're unwilling to do that. We act as though everything is debatable, nothing is solid. How many times have you seen a parent arguing with a small child over why it's not right to beat up other kids? The child is incapable of grasping the subtleties of the issue, and not far enough developed mentally to have much of a sense of empathy. The kid just needs firm, unbreakable rules, and the willingness of the parent to engage in unwinnable arguments only convinces the child that the issue is, in fact, arguable.
If the values of Western civilization are to survive and thrive, we are going to have to regain our confidence in them and be willing to proclaim that confidence out loud.
The war with Islam is over whether we should live under a civilization at all.
For all Western Civilization's faults, that stark difference makes most anti-Western arguments moot.
I'm not sure that one can generalize about countries in the middle east. In the case of Iran, you may be right. Afghanistan and Iraq, I don't think so. Jordan? Certainly. Syria and Egypt? Doubtful. Saudi Arabia? I think we're their only chance-- If we leave them alone, the Islamic fundamentalists will topple the Sauds and the average person will be in worse shape than before.
Given your choice of psuedonym, I'm not suprised you'd find the Nietzschean ideal of "commitment" appealing.
It is possible that you are right. Saudi Arabia may have to go through a stage of control by Islamic fundamentalists. If so, 70 years of American support for a corrupt and venal monarchy will have played a large part in provoking this. In any case, it is their country and their problem. Just an Iran is starting to throw off the shackles of theocracy, so too will the Saudis one day.
I'm sure you're right--good upbringing is essential to any society.
I learned this back in the 7th grade. Today, freedoms are taken for granted.
Who exactly should we blame for this? Oh right. The sniper targets. They throw rocks at the occupying army, don't you know?
American interference in Afghanistan was pretty much non-existant prior to its invasion by the Soviets-- and even then, the money we sent was funnelled through the Pakistani intelligence agencies because we wanted plausible deniability. Anyway, people who argue about how wrong we were in Afghanistan are just like the people who argue how wrong we were to support South Vietnam. Interestingly enough, all of the actual South Vietnamese immigrants to this country that I know think our only sin was to desert them. I agree with them. Our fault in Afghanistan was not that we supported those fighting the Soviets, but that we pulled out and left them to be preyed on by their Muslim neighbors.
I'm not aware of anything we've done in Iraq, other than stomp them out of Kuwait. Likewise, I don't think we've done much of anything in Syria. Jordan is another case, though: haven't you seen their young king on television? Very reasonable, very moderate, British-educated, and very interested in advancing his country into the modern age. Seems like pretty good western influence to me.
As for Saudi Arabia, you may think it's just fine to abandon them to two generations of Islamic fascism, but besides turning their lives to misery and creating a flood of refugees into the west, I think it's likely to make them more virulent sponsors of international terrorism than they already are. Bad idea, in my book.
But care must be taken: Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer were quite confident that they'd figured it out, and that they were doing the right thing (i.e., exactly what they wanted so long as they didn't get caught). But we can see that this is a heinous, false, insane understanding of human life.
Nietzsche was a cultural relativist--he thought "every society is entitled to their own opinion," and carried it to its logical conclusion: that, since no opinion is true and therefore the best, each opinion was worth the same--nothing. Thus, any opinion your will is commited to--that you're confident in--is justifiable. Walden was written along lines Nietzsche agreed with--that modern reason is toxic, and a return to more natural foundations was necessary. He just went to a bad "natural" place.
That was a mouthful. I've got to go pick up my girlfriend. Adios.
"In the end, more than freedom they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again."
-- Edward Gibbons
You're right, and I hope we're not becoming Athens.
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