Charles Murray Preaches the Gospel

[Dennis Hardin]

On Saturday evening, C-Span televised a talk given by Charles Murray on February 6, 2012, in which the popular libertarian author discussed some key issues tearing at the fabric of American society. His talk included the following exchange with a member of his audience.

Question: Can we turn this around the without going back to our religious roots-- the classic religious roots that were a part of the founding of this country?

Self-disclosure is appropriate at this point. I'm an agnostic who is a wannabe believer. I have to say that the founders were very explicit about religiosity being absolutely necessary for a self-governing society—and I mean self-governing at the individual level. And the fact is that the jury is still out on whether secular societies can exist for a long time. Europe is experimenting with that right now much more than we are, and we will soon know the answer. I have two thoughts. One is that I think this is real important. I think the role of traditional religion in a free society is crucial for its long-term health and survival. And I also think that we are on the cusp of a revitalization of the spiritual dimension of life among the new upper class and perhaps the society in general.

I have said this before and I will say it again very briefly here. I look upon the 20th century as the adolescence of Homo Sapiens, when we decided as adolescents that our parents had been wrong about everything--and after 2000 I think we are growing out of that. We are seeing a lot of signs--probably because the baby boomers are coming to terms with their own mortality--that we may be seeing a revival of serious religious commitment which I think would be a wonderful thing.

(emphasis added)

This was said during the Q & A of a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute regarding his new book: Coming Apart: The State of White America in 1960 – 2010. His book deals with the growing evidence of what he sees as the precursor to a new era of class warfare in America between a well educated, professional, prosperous upper-class and an increasingly destitute lower-class of less educated, working-class adults.

Charles Murray is a brilliant scholar and probably the preeminent sociologist of his day. He is also a leading libertarian thinker.. He is familiar with the basics of the Objectivist philosophy. I know for a fact that Nathaniel Branden is a good friend of Murray’s. In his book, What It Means To Be a Libertarian, Murray states: “I devoured The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged during my teens and still reread favorite passages from time to time.”

As an agnostic, he has to be aware of the fact that traditional religious beliefs are utterly incompatible with a rational philosophy. He knows that Ayn Rand has offered a scientific, secular alternative based on man’s nature, not the rantings of a ghost in the sky. Yet he thinks our only choice for restoring an appreciation of the importance of moral principles is a return to the Ten Commandments. He clearly shares the opinion of many conservative thinkers (Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, et.al.) that religion and religion alone can provide a moral foundation for a free society.

Note that Murray is not contending that the less educated, working class needs the moral compass of primitive religion because Objectivism is too sophisticated for them. He specifically states that the well educated upper class—including himself apparently—needs to rediscover the moral purpose and direction which religious guidance alone can provide for their lives.

If I had been in his audience, I would have stood up and tossed his rotten book in the garbage can as I walked out the door.

[merjet]

I saw that show, which can be viewed here. I didn't get a favorable impression. He posits two segments of the white population, which live in the towns Belmont and Fishtown. Belmont consists of people who are better educated, with higher incomes, and more are married. Fishtown consists of people who are less educated, with lower incomes (declining on average), and far more single parents. Murray said the people from Belmont should be more preachy about the morals of those in Fishtown and themselves, and that in recent decades they haven't been.

[BaalChatzaf]

If I had been in his audience, I would have stood up and tossed his rotten book in the garbage can as I walked out the door.

There is something seductive about the idea of aiming for something bigger than one's self or localized self interest.

This goes back thousands of years: R. Hillel used to say:

If I am not for myself, then who is for me?

If I am only for myself, then what am I?

If not now, then when?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I absolutely loved this lecture. I'm going to get the book.

I have no problem with Murray's idea that America seems to be coming to a new phase of religiousness and he considers this a good thing. I didn't get the feeling he was talking about any one religion, or the Ten Commandments, or the ghost in the sky, or anything like that, but instead about a social-moral routine people engage in--i.e., they make a regular schedule of social meetings where they discuss moral issues and act on them voluntarily. This informs and helps them mold their character as neighbors.

That is what I believe he means. His entire discussion of religion was done within the context of the clunky term "social capital."

Since I follow Glenn Beck as a viewer, I'll mention the way Beck puts the idea of "social capital." If we don't take care of broken and needy people voluntarily through charities and personal goodwill, the government will eventually step in and do it for us.

To me, that's one hell of an argument for justifying the idea of cultivating voluntary charity as a value, even if a person is one of those exceptions to the human race who totally lacks empathy.

From what I understood, Murray made the same point. And he made the point that in the lower class community (Fishtown), since keeping up routines of discussing morality and practicing it (which is usually done by people practicing religion) has gone out the window, there is an increase in crime and so forth.

He talked about the existential and intellectual bubble the upper class (Belmont) is living in because they grow up there and never venture out of it. I see this and I usually rant against it by bashing "conceit," "snootiness," "vanity" and so forth. I totally agree with Murray that these people would do well to commingle a bit with the lower class. Character is not a matter of class, but instead a matter of choosing to be good.

His premise, which he did not state explicitly, is the same I get from Beck. Freedom only works when people are interested in being good. Once they lose that interest, freedom eventually evaporates. Murray talked about the "American experiment" instead, but this is what I understand it to boil down to.

I do not live in a neighborhood where you can leave your doors unlocked like he mentioned, but I have visited places like that. The feeling was wonderful.

It was the same feeling I got when I went to Back's "Restoring Honor" rally. A clear manifestation of that spirit was the fact that we left the place cleaner than what we found it. (I say "we" because I identify strongly with this kind of person, not because I personally picked up any trash. I didn't, except to make sure I didn't create any trash of my own on the grounds. Frankly, I would have picked up some on leaving if I had seen some that did not entail getting into someone else's space at the moment.)

I think people interested in rational morality would do better to welcome the coming religiosity than fight it. You can hop on that wave and ride it all the way to the beach.

Here's what I am talking about. Not everyone interested in morality wants it to come from The Big Guy In The Sky. But you will only find such people in communities of those who are interested in morality, i.e., among "America's third spiritual awakening" (as Beck calls it). You will not find them at places where no one in the community is interested. (Maybe an exception here and there, but these people are rare.)

I believe in the strength of reason and I believe that it will win out against fundamentalist religions. So I am content to look at a bigger picture, see the benefits of where I can act, and realize that the pace is slower than I would like.

Here's an example of how to act. Murray discussed something I am going to look into--not right now but for a future project. But this one excites me, so I actually expect it to invade another project I have going. (But I'll have to digest and internalize the damn thing before anything else, since this was the first I had ever heard of it.)

He talked about McGuffey's Readers being the way children learned morality for a century and a half in the USA. And this was one of the reasons moral values were more or less consistent until the 1960's. I'm thinking--this work is now in the public domain. If it endured for a century and a half as a series of textbooks, it obviously did something right. Hell, the language changes a lot over that amount of time. So what if someone reworked that thing into a modern version and leaned hard on the rational side?

I believe there will be a strong market for something like that in the upcoming intellectual environment.

Anyway, the woods are lovely, but I have to stop right now. I have promises to keep. But I'm really glad I saw this lecture. It gave me some excellent food for thought.

I also want to mention how important a study Murray's is for marketing and profiling target markets... er... OK... gotta run...

Michael

[Selene]

Michael:

It is interesting what you are observing about what Mark Levin calls the "civil society."

My lady and I attended a Quaker Church while in Virginia. The folks there were well aware of my positions and my advancement of Rand's concepts.

They were completely comfortable with it and asked me to conduct a Sunday School lesson which I did and we had an excellent discussion about ideas.

I know that I would not be asked to give that same talk at a leftist/marxist/progressive "school" in today's climate of anti-intellectualism that exists in those venues.

Curious, isn't it?

Adam

[caroljane]

Michael:

It is interesting what you are observing about what Mark Levin calls the "civil society."

My lady and I attended a Quaker Church while in Virginia. The folks there were well aware of my positions and my advancement of Rand's concepts.

They were completely comfortable with it and asked me to conduct a Sunday School lesson which I did and we had an excellent discussion about ideas.

I know that I would not be asked to give that same talk at a leftist/marxist/progressive "school" in today's climate of anti-intellectualism that exists in those venues.

Curious, isn't it?

Adam

Adam, I think you would meet the same response from my cousin's Anglican congregation, and have an equally good discussion.

I remember when my parents met my Objectivist boyfriend for the first time. My utterly religious mother's comment was. "He says he doesn't believe in God! he has a lovely way of speaking. I asked him, how would he bring up children to think, and he said he would let them make up their own minds. Did you ever hear the like?"

[Selene]

Did you ever hear the like?"

Carol:

Since I labor under the blessing, or curse, of speaking "Merican" "Anglish," what exactly does that phrase mean?

I could guess, but I would prefer to know.

Adam

[caroljane]

Did you ever hear the like?"

Carol:

Since I labor under the blessing, or curse, of speaking "Merican" "Anglish," what exactly does that phrase mean?

I could guess, but I would prefer to know.

Adam

lol "Well, I never!" "That's a new one on me!" "Lawks-a mercy-" etc

(any help? there are many hilarious Maritime Lexicons you would enjoy if you ever got the chance to visit and enlighten

Anneland)

[Selene]

Did you ever hear the like?"

Carol:

Since I labor under the blessing, or curse, of speaking "Merican" "Anglish," what exactly does that phrase mean?

I could guess, but I would prefer to know.

Adam

lol "Well, I never!" "That's a new one on me!" "Lawks-a mercy-" etc

(any help? there are many hilarious Maritime Lexicons you would enjoy if you ever got the chance to visit and enlighten

Anneland)

Ahh. OK. I was definitely on the wrong page, glad I asked.

[Dennis Hardin]

Charles Murray on the limitations of human reason:

Murray: Let's face it—we all bring to our readings of it a variety of predispositions that it's very hard to escape from, and so I should lay on the table my own predisposition. For some time, independently of this book, I have found empiricism and reason, not to be contradictory, but to be different. One of the things about empiricism and looking at the world as you find it is that a lot of times it forces you to go back and look again at the reasons that you have for believing things. I have a very strong sense of the limitations of reason in understanding a variety of phenomena. By "reason" here I am partially referring to strict logic, but I am also referring to my own sense that the world is not only stranger than we know but stranger than we can imagine. This is not an appeal to know-nothingism, it is not an appeal to mysticism. It is an appeal to openness. So, I am open to the idea of religiosity as not just an empirically useful or un-useful factor in history but as something which may be trying to get at truths that are out there, truths that we do not yet understand. The Enlightenment went overboard—that is what I am trying to say. Their faith in reason became almost religious, and I think it ultimately proved inadequate.

Immanuel Kant, meet Charles Murray.

[Dennis Hardin]

If I had been in his audience, I would have stood up and tossed his rotten book in the garbage can as I walked out the door.

There is something seductive about the idea of aiming for something bigger than one's self or localized self interest.

This goes back thousands of years: R. Hillel used to say:

If I am not for myself, then who is for me?

If I am only for myself, then what am I?

If not now, then when?

Ba'al Chatzaf

The crucial point here is that capitalism cannot prevail without a rational ethical foundation. Ayn Rand has provided that foundation. Charles Murray is doing his part to destroy the last vestiges of capitalism by advocating that we return to "a revival of serious religious commitment," including, of course, the morality of altruism. He does not mince words here, as if to praise some vague notion of renewed respect for moral rules. He states it very clearly: "I think the role of traditional religion in a free society is crucial for its long-term health and survival." And the context provided by his comment about "coming to terms with mortality" underscores that the viewpoint he endorses is the traditional religious viewpoint. He would like to see all of us back in church every Sunday.

Murray on upper class America: They "are getting married and staying married. They work like crazy. They do better going to church. [They should] just say that, 'These are not choices we've made for ourselves. ... These are rich, rewarding ways of living.' "

Murray is far too intelligent not to know exactly what he is saying. We must take him at his word, not embellish his words so that his viewpoint coincides with what we might like him to say.

BTW, Objectivism does not advocate that individuals dispense with all concern with others. It advocates that we learn to view others from the selfish perspective of their relative value to our own life and happiness, and treat them accordingly.