Books in Brief: The Irony of Virtue: Ethics and American Power

The Irony of Virtue: Ethics and American Power, by Ernest W. Lefever, foreword by William F. Buckley Jr. (Westfield Press, 254 pp., $26)

FROM youthful Christian pacifism during World War II through a gradual awakening to a prudential “humane” realism as he toured the devastated Old World in the war’s aftermath, Ernest W. Lefever has struggled to understand Christian conviction and the nature of politics. As his experience deepened, Lefever grasped the “irony of virtue”: that good intentions in political life, if they ignore the consequences of action, can easily lead to ruin. The statesman confronting the tumult of the life of nations, Lefever came to see, must often make decisions that will haunt him all the rest of his life; yet those decisions may well be morally right. Lefever’s sensitivity to such moral complexity is amply displayed in these forty essays—drawn from a lifetime of engagement—on nuclear weapons, the evils of secular religion, the problems of the Third World, and America as freedom’s best defense in a dangerous world.

About the Author

Brian C. Anderson

Mr. Anderson is editor of City Journal and author of Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents, South Park Conservatives, and other books.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

The Irony of Virtue: Ethics and American Power, by Ernest W. Lefever, foreword by William F. Buckley Jr. (Westfield Press, 254 pp., $26)

FROM youthful Christian pacifism during World War II through a gradual awakening to a prudential “humane” realism as he toured the devastated Old World in the war’s aftermath, Ernest W. Lefever has struggled to understand Christian conviction and the nature of politics. As his experience deepened, Lefever grasped the “irony of virtue”: that good intentions in political life, if they ignore the consequences of action, can easily lead to ruin. The statesman confronting the tumult of the life of nations, Lefever came to see, must often make decisions that will haunt him all the rest of his life; yet those decisions may well be morally right. Lefever’s sensitivity to such moral complexity is amply displayed in these forty essays—drawn from a lifetime of engagement—on nuclear weapons, the evils of secular religion, the problems of the Third World, and America as freedom’s best defense in a dangerous world.