The Reverend Mr. Opitz is a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education.
We live in a time of great uneasiness, when the values of the free society which we cherish are being seriously challenged; challenged not only by imperial communism abroad but also by dubious ideologies here at home. Even if by some miracle the communist challenge vanished overnight and the international scene ceased to trouble us, there is every reason to believe that we have enough domestic problems to keep us busy for the next generation.
Outwardly, everything seems prosperous. Nearly everyone who really wants to work can find a job. Automobiles are bigger, faster, and more numerous. Restaurants and places of entertainment are crowded. There are increased opportunities for travel and recreation. In the cultural fields of religion and education, there is much activity. New church buildings are springing up everywhere, and increasing numbers of people are participating in religious activities. In education, likewise. Year by year, we are spending a larger proportion of our income on schooling. More young people are in college every year, and communities all over the land are engaged in a mighty school building program.
All of these things should give us a sense of satisfaction; but they don’t. There is probably more discontent now among our people than at any time in the history of this country. We view with alarm the rising incidence of crime and juvenile delinquency, the mounting problems of alcoholism and drug addiction. Then there is inflation, causing prices to rise while at the same time it dilutes the value of our savings accounts and insurance policies. Government grows larger all the while, marking the stampede away from personal responsibility which occurs at all levels of life.
A recent writer has remarked that "this is the goof-off, the age of the half-done job. Our land," he continues, "is populated with laundrymen who won’t iron shirts, with waiters who won’t serve, with carpenters who will come around some day maybe, with businessmen whose minds are on the golf course, with teachers who demand a single salary schedule so that achievements cannot be rewarded nor poor work punished, and with students who take cinch courses because the hard ones make them think." How did we get ourselves into such a mess, and how can we get ourselves out of it?
Perhaps the most helpful way to face up to our present situation is to look at our past history. If we wish to recover faith in ourselves and in our free society, we must understand what this faith is and what it meant to earlier generations. A new nation was brought forth upon this continent. What was it like, and what was the source of its strength and idealism?
During the nineteenth century, the world of the defeated and the oppressed looked to
Emblem of American Ideals
The Declaration of Independence was once the emblem of American idealism. The
The Declaration, in paragraph 1, refers to "the laws of nature and nature’s God." In paragraph 2, the signers of the Declaration say that, as far as they are concerned they believe or accept as axiomatic, the proposition that the Creator endowed men with certain rights. Other men might hold that "rights" are granted by the State, or else have a purely naturalistic basis; "we hold" that these rights have a supernatural derivation, i.e., they are God-given. The Creator is sovereign. In other words, our Declaration of Independence has a built-in religious dimension; and the importance of this fact is underscored by the absence of a similar dimension from a comparable document issued in 1789, thirteen years after our own Declaration, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens.
A Study in Contrasts
The French Declaration, wishing to set forth "these natural, imprescriptible, and unalienable rights" says: "The national assembly doth recognize and declare, in the presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of His blessings and favor, the following sacred rights of men and citizens." It will be noted that, although the Supreme Being is mentioned, he is invoked as a mere gesture of formality; he is not acknowledged as the source of human rights. What then is this source according to the French Declaration? Paragraph III tells us. "The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any individual, or any body of men, be entitled to any authority which is not derived from it." The French and American Revolutions are, in short, based on contrary principles.
The American dream was not of a sovereign people, which in practice comes down to mere majority rule; the American dream has at its center the individual person, endowed by God with certain rights which no other individual nor combination of individuals may properly transgress. Government itself must respect these individual rights, and government serves the ends of freedom and justice by punishing any trespass on these private rights.
This same respect for the individual and this recognition of his rights and immunities which we find in the Declaration is reflected also in our Constitution. The men who drafted the Constitution did not design a streamlined political structure. James Madison and the others had been once burnt by government, and they were twice shy. They created a political structure in which the federal government was to be internally self-governed by three separate but balanced powers, and the several states were to retain their original sovereignty in order to act as a counterpoise to the central authority. This entire political equilibrium was balanced on the sovereign individual; the only excuse for government was to secure him in his rights. The Founding Fathers knew that a free government implies an unfree people, so in the interests of personal liberty they pinned down their government to strictly limited, defined, and delegated functions.
A Great Religious Tradition
Where did the Founding Fathers get this generous estimate of man? They were students of history, and we know from their writings that they were thoroughly acquainted with the social and political institutions of ancient
The Founding Fathers were the inheritors of a great religious tradition and the American dream of a society of free men was largely a projection of that religion. This is how the original American equation got its built-in religious dimension. But this equation no longer balances because the religious elements in it have been discarded or forgotten. In a sense, we have been merely coasting on a momentum once given to us and with which we have now lost contact. Such an analysis helps us understand, I think, the discontent and uncertainty to which I referred earlier.
A Solid Foundation
The American dream was built upon a religious foundation. And this was noted by a young Frenchman who came to these shores to study us back in the 1830′s, Alexis de Tocqueville. "Religion," he said of us, "is the first of their political institutions." Political liberty is the limitation of government to the securing of men in their rights, and because these rights derive from religious premises, political liberty needs to rest on a religious foundation. To employ a figure of speech, political liberty is a check drawn against the capital stock of our religious heritage. When a check bounces, the inference is that there are no funds in the bank. Similarly, we cannot go on drawing upon our religious heritage unless we systematically replenish it. How do we rehabilitate our religious heritage?
I wish it were possible at this point to offer you a simple answer. I wish it were possible to say that all we need to do is go back to church. But the answer is not so simple. Many of the most articulate church leaders of our time are part of the problem, not part of the remedy. They have sought to use the churches for their own ends, and so we are often presented with a counterfeit faith. But there are churches of all faiths which "proclaim liberty throughout the land," and at least they point the direction in which we must look for our answers. The men of such churches once created the American dream, and the men of such churches today can, if they will, recreate it.