Moral Obtuseness in America

HADLEY ARKES

This melancholy report was offered, a few weeks ago, by a friend who teaches at the war college attached to one of our military services: His students were all seasoned veterans, in their forties; they had all seen military action; but they were still, twenty years later, the people who had been college students in the 1960s, and they had absorbed much of the secular religion that affected other young people at the time. They were, on the whole, skeptical of the notion of moral truths that held in all times and places. They had served their country in the military, but they were far from clear that there was anything about the American Republic that truly justified the risk of their lives. They could not really say, with Lincoln, that the right of human beings to govern themselves was a right that was “applicable to all men and all times.” These soldiers of their country were more disposed to believe, with other people their age, that the understanding of what was right and wrong was always “relative” to a particular “culture” or country. They would not claim, then, that the political regime in America was morally superior to that of the Soviet Union or Vietnam. They would settle for the far more modest claim that our political way of life was at least “ours.” And on that basis, we were warranted in hazarding our lives to preserve it.

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HADLEY ARKES

This melancholy report was offered, a few weeks ago, by a friend who teaches at the war college attached to one of our military services: His students were all seasoned veterans, in their forties; they had all seen military action; but they were still, twenty years later, the people who had been college students in the 1960s, and they had absorbed much of the secular religion that affected other young people at the time. They were, on the whole, skeptical of the notion of moral truths that held in all times and places. They had served their country in the military, but they were far from clear that there was anything about the American Republic that truly justified the risk of their lives. They could not really say, with Lincoln, that the right of human beings to govern themselves was a right that was “applicable to all men and all times.” These soldiers of their country were more disposed to believe, with other people their age, that the understanding of what was right and wrong was always “relative” to a particular “culture” or country. They would not claim, then, that the political regime in America was morally superior to that of the Soviet Union or Vietnam. They would settle for the far more modest claim that our political way of life was at least “ours.” And on that basis, we were warranted in hazarding our lives to preserve it.