The Case for an American Revolution in Morals
Wall Street Journal | Barton Swaim
Barton Swaim visits Harvard professor Hankins, who proposes the need for a moral revolution. Swaim sees repeated failures among our intellectual and political leaders. “Hankins, a historian of the Italian Renaissance, blames a lack of virtue.”
“I have to admit,” writes Swaim, “at the moment American constitutional democracy doesn’t seem very good at limiting the damage done by bad and foolish officials. In fact we seem overrun with rulers who possess lots of Machiavellian guile but no Machiavellian competence. Maybe we have something to learn from virtue politics?”
Swaim introduces readers to Hankins’ views before we even meet the man: “On the way to Mr. Hankins’s house, I noted many yard signs proclaiming tribal membership in the inane language of modern progressivism: ‘Science is real’ ‘Love is love,’ ‘Black lives matter,’ ‘Embrace diversity,’ ‘Empower the powerless.’ Mr. Hankins’s interpretation of his neighbors’ strange fragments: ‘They’re enjoying the approval of their own consciences without training their minds in any serious way through moral effort.’”
“Surely we’re not going back to virtue-based politics, but maybe there are things we can learn from the humanist tradition?” asks Swaim. ‘I’m not sure I agree with that,” retorts Hankins. “You need a moral revolution to make it happen, but political meritocracy is something that can be revived, in my view.”
As for the next generation, writes Swaim, “Mr. Hankins, 67, has been teaching at Harvard for 37 years and speaks with affection about his students. ‘The younger generation out there is disgusted with the older one,’ he says. ‘The people who get all the attention from the press are the woke, but there’s another big part of the young population that’s ready for a moral revolution.’”