1999 (53 page)

We should use our negotiations with Moscow to demonstrate our resolve in areas of irreconcilable conflict, to work toward mutually beneficial accords in areas of possible agreement, to increase contact between Soviet society and the West, and to structure as constructive a relationship with the Soviets as their international behavior permits.

Most of all, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that a reduction in U.S.–Soviet tensions means the end of the conflict. If Gorbachev stresses the need to solve his internal problems, we should not be conned into thinking that the system has changed or that the threat to the West has ended. Those in the West who believe he has abandoned the Soviet goal of a communist world should note the conclusion of his speech on the seventieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution: “In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, the world of communism. We shall never turn off that road.” Even as he pushes forward with reforms, Gorbachev will still press for Soviet interests and challenge ours—and he will be back in full force in twenty years. If we take the needed actions in the years before 1999, we will be ready for him.

We must avoid the danger of complacency. As Paul Johnson wrote, “One of the lessons of history is that no civilization can be taken for granted. Its permanency can never be assured; there is always a dark age waiting for you around the corner, if you play your cards badly and you make sufficient mistakes.” We cannot allow Western civilization to meet with that fate. We have the needed physical and moral reserves, but we still have to demonstrate that we have the skill and the will to prevail.

As we attend to material needs and political problems, we must not ignore the need to address the spiritual dimension of mankind.

America stands for certain philosophical ideas. When the new negativists carp about America's demise, they are arguing not only that the United States has lost the will to lead but also that it has lost its faith in itself. They are right to point out the problem. Great civilizations in the past have declined not only because they have tired of the sacrifices necessary for leadership but also because
they lost their sense of purpose and direction. A nation that has lost faith in its ideals cannot expect its ideals to have appeal to others.

To restore our faith we must look to our roots. Two centuries ago, the United States was weak militarily and poor economically. But the country created in the American Revolution caught the imagination of the world. Our appeal stemmed not from our wealth or our power but from our ideas. Too often today we emphasize only our military and economic power. While we pay homage to our founding principles on special days, our day-to-day dialogue is dominated by the message of materialism.

But there is more to this world than per-capita GNP statistics. When historians write about our times several hundred years from now, they will tell the story of a titanic struggle between two clashing conceptions of man and his place in the world. The American–Soviet contest is a struggle between the opposite poles of human experience—between those represented by the sword and by the spirit, by fear and by hope. The Soviets' system is ruled by the sword; ours is ruled by the spirit. Their influence is spread through conquest; ours is spread by example. We know freedom, liberty, hope, and self-fulfillment; they know tyranny, butchery, starvation, war, and repression. Those qualities that make the prospect of Soviet victory so frightful are the same ones that make it possible.

We believe in the primacy of the individual; the Soviets believe in the primacy of the state. We believe in a government with limited powers; they believe in a totalitarian system with all power in the hands of the party and the state. Our system was designed to give the individual the greatest scope for action consistent with public order and the rights of others. We have unlocked the creative energies of individuals, while the Soviets have locked up their most creative individuals. We have created a dynamic system—which is most admired not for its products but for its freedom—while the Soviets have built a stagnant society suffocated by bureaucracy.

The power of Moscow's sword cannot defeat the power of the West's spirit. In deriding the ability of the Church to affect world events, Stalin once wryly asked how many divisions the Pope commanded.
That comment bespoke a failure to understand what moves the world. Ideas, not arms, ultimately determine history. That is especially true when statesmen who understand the way the world works are armed with powerful ideas.

Pope John Paul II is a perfect example. He is the most influential religious leader of the twentieth century. What is the secret of his enormous appeal to men and women of all faiths, all nations, all races? It is not just his exalted office with its magnificent pageantry and vestments. It is not that he is one of the world's most gifted linguists, has a warm personality, and knows how to use television. People listen to the Pope because they want to hear what he has to say—not just about religion but about the mysteries of life and the intricacies of statecraft. He lifts people out of the drudgery, drabness, and boredom that plague life for both rich and poor. He gives them a vision of what man can be if he will listen to what Lincoln called the better angels of his nature. Against such a faith as this, communism, the antifaith, cannot prevail.

When the new Soviet leader eventually travels to other parts of the United States, far more important than having him see our swimming pools, our shopping centers, our millions of automobiles is for him to see and to sense the spirit and the ideas that made these things possible. If we compete with the Soviets materially, we will win because our system works and theirs does not. But our greatest strength—from the time of our national independence—has been our ideas. Moscow cannot even compete on that level. Marxism-Leninism has nothing left to say to the world. Our freedoms enable us to search for new meaning in changing times.

America was founded by individuals who sought religious freedom, who wanted the right to worship God in their own way and to look for meaning in life on their own terms. We must not lose sight of this animating principle of our country. We should not allow our competition with Moscow to degenerate into a contest over which side can create the most bombs, the tallest buildings, and the highest per-capita GNP. If material wealth is our only goal, we are no different from the communists. We should heed Max Weber's warning against the destructive, selfish materialism—the bureaucratization of the human spirit, an “iron cage” for the West. We should channel the U.S.–Soviet competition into a debate over
whose ideas will result in not only the strongest or the richest economy but also the most just society.

The communists deny there is a God, but no one can deny that communism is a faith. We believe it is a false faith, but the answer to a false faith can never be no faith. When America was weak and poor two hundred years ago we were sustained by our faith. As we enter our third century and the next millennium, we must rediscover and reinvigorate our faith.

Our greatest challenge in this respect is to enable all our citizens to share fully America's success. In creating a system based on equality and liberty, our Founding Fathers threw down a challenge to those who would follow. They knew that their society did not measure up to their ideals, particularly because of slavery. But they hoped that over time our system would evolve and someday match their vision. We must continue that pursuit. We must solve the problems of the urban underclass, the homeless, the poor, the disadvantaged. We must rectify the inequalities from which blacks and other minorities suffer. The fact that much of the black community in America is no better off today than it was twenty-four years ago when the Civil Rights Act was passed is a blot on our past and a challenge for our future. We must recapture the sense of compassion that was so eloquently demonstrated by millions in America and others throughout the world a few months ago when the plight of an eighteen-month-old baby girl trapped in an abandoned well touched our hearts.

We should not return to the failed government programs of the past. But we must not use those failures as an excuse to quit trying. We need new approaches to these problems. There will have to be profound changes in the attitudes of the poor and in society's attitudes toward the poor. We have learned that solving poverty is more complicated than simply giving poor people money. Before we can have constructive action against poverty, we need creative thought about the problem.

We will make no progress if the creativity of our young people is consumed in the purely selfish pursuit of financial gain and social status. Nietzsche wrote that he foresaw the day when such secular, rationalistic values would triumph and in doing so bring about the demise of civilization. He warned against what he called the “last
man,” a creature totally obsessed with security and comfort and incapable of throwing himself into a higher cause. Nietzsche rightly saw the last man as a repellent creature. We do not have to accept Nietzsche's nihilism to agree with his assessment. The West will become impotent as a moral force if its guiding philosophy degenerates into what Russell Kirk has called a kind of cosmic selfishness.

In the 1960s, we accepted the mistaken belief that we could create a great society simply by ensuring that its people were well fed, well housed, well clothed, well educated, and well cared for. All these are important, but a life limited to the realm of material possessions is an achingly empty one. We should remember the biblical admonition, “Man does not live by bread alone.”

The search for meaning in life has gone on since the beginning of civilization. It will never end, because the final answer will always elude us. But it is vitally important that we engage in the search, because we will thereby develop a fuller, better life for ourselves. Some believe the answer will be found in the classics; others seek it in religion. Of this we can be sure: Meaning cannot be found in sheer materialism, whether communist or capitalist. The Supreme Court has ruled that our Constitution requires that we not teach religion in our schools. But removing religion from our schools should not mean rejection of religion in life. It is because they addressed spiritual values and fulfillment that the world's great religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism—have inspired people for centuries.

We need to restore faith in our ideals, in our destiny, in ourselves. We are here for more than hedonistic self-satisfaction. We are here to make history—not to ignore the past, not to destroy the past, not to turn back to the past, but to move onward and upward in a way that opens up new vistas for the future.

In addition to the great foreign-policy issues before us, we need to direct ourselves to a very basic question: How do we want America to be remembered? Do we want to be remembered as a people who built the biggest houses, drove the fastest cars, wore the finest clothes, produced the best athletes? Do we want to be
remembered as a society in which rock stars were more admired than great teachers? In which beautiful people were more admired than interesting people? In which telegenic quality was more important than brains, bad manners more than decency, sensationalism more than truth, scandal more than good deeds? Or do we wish to be remembered as a people who created great music, art, literature, and philosophy, who acted as a force for good in the world, and who devoted themselves to the search for meaning and a larger purpose?

We need to realign our philosophical bearings—to return to the animating principles of our country and rededicate ourselves to perfecting our society according to those ideas. It is a tragic fact that war traditionally calls forth our greatest talents. War produces unity in a common purpose and stretches man to his ultimate. That is more difficult to achieve in peacetime—but we should make it our goal to do so. The total effort required to fight a war must be mobilized to build a better peace. Our best answer to Gorbachev's “new thinking” is a new America.