Insights on Philanthropy
by Fred Smith

Ross Douthat’s article this week in the New York Times titled “Can The Working Class Be Saved?” starts with a reference to Charles Murray’s latest book, “Coming Apart.” “What’s brilliant is Murray’s portrait, rich in data and anecdote, of the steady breakdown of what he calls America’s “founding virtues” — thrift and industriousness, fidelity and parental responsibility, piety and civic engagement — within America’s working class, and the personal and communal wreckage that’s ensued.”

There may be one more founding virtue as well. It’s what Lord Moulton in a 1924 essay in “The Atlantic Monthly” called “obedience to the unenforceable.” What’s that? “There are three great domains of Human Action. First comes the domain of Positive Law, where our actions are prescribed by laws binding upon us which must be obeyed. Next comes the domain of Free Choice, which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom. But between these two there is a third large and important domain in which there rules neither Positive Law nor Absolute Freedom. In that domain there is no law which inexorably determines our course of action, and yet we feel that we are not free to choose as we would. The degree of this sense of a lack of complete freedom in this domain varies in every case. It grades from a consciousness of a Duty nearly as strong as Positive Law, to a feeling that the matter is all but a question of personal choice. Some might wish to parcel out this domain into separate countries, calling one, for instance, the domain of Duty, another the domain of Public Spirit, another the domain of Good Form; but I prefer to look at it as all one domain, for it has one and the same characteristic throughout — it is the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable. The obedience is the obedience of a man to that which he cannot be forced to obey. He is the enforcer of the law upon himself.

“The dangers that threaten the maintenance of this domain of Manners arise from its situation between the region of Absolute Choice and the region of Positive Law. There are countless supporters of the movements to enlarge the sphere of Positive Law. In many countries — especially in the younger nations — there is a tendency to make laws to regulate everything. On the other hand, there is a growing tendency to treat matters that are not regulated by Positive Law as being matters of Absolute Choice. Both these movements are encroachments on the middle land, and to my mind the real greatness of a nation, its true civilization, is measured by the extent of this land of Obedience to the Unenforceable. It measures the extent to which the nation trusts its citizens, and its existence and area testify to the way they behave in response to that trust. Mere obedience to Law does not measure the greatness of a Nation. It can easily be obtained by a strong executive, and most easily of all from a timorous people. Nor is the licence of behavior which so often accompanies the absence of Law, and which is miscalled Liberty, a proof of greatness. The true test is the extent to which the individuals composing the nation can be trusted to obey self-imposed law.”

Watching the struggle between the extreme poles of our current politics has only underscored the wisdom of Moulton’s insight. It is not heavier regulation or more free choice that is the single solution to the rift in our nation today. It is the breakdown of personal responsibility and adherence to the self-imposed law that is in jeopardy. What we need is what Moulton described as people able to enforce these laws upon themselves.

I've been wondering if our political leadership (both parties) is now perceived as being so far removed from our actual lives and, instead, seen as entertainment that the actual effects of an election are incidental. The impact of who wins is about as significant in the minds of voters as who wins on "American Idol." Why did the Italians continue to elect Silvio Berlusconi? Because he was entertaining and seeing him on television turned him into someone with "fans" and not a constituency.This is not a screed. Just a thought.

Years ago I did a study on the uses of television. Marshall McLuhan was right in saying "the medium is the message" and the medium of television is entertainment - pure and simple. The content it can bear is limited because, unlike reading or listening, it is a medium of flickering images. Yes, we do have local cable channels that carry city council and school board meetings but that is not really television, is it? First and foremost, television is about entertainment and everything must conform to that for it to work. Every medium – print, radio, visual arts – has rules that make it work to carry the message. That’s not good or bad. It just is.

In “Amusing Ourselves to Death” Neil Postman said, “Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.” We watch our “leaders” and the debates as mere entertainment and increasingly have lost any sense of these actors having any genuine sense of the issues.

Sting said it years ago. “You could say I'd lost my belief in our politicians. They all seemed like game show hosts to me.”