THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506030001
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Wall Street Journal Editor Robert Bartley wants a new moralism in America. He gave commencement assurance to Mayo Medical School graduates that finding such a creed ``is a principal preoccupation among my friends.'' When it's found and formulated, there will be a foundation ``for saying that some things are right and others wrong.'' Philosophers, lawmakers and judges will be able to find direction in this new ``moral consensus.''
This is all very encouraging; perhaps even now, Bartley should be deciding whether to publish the new creed on paper or on stone. But in the interim, it's dismaying - creedwise - to see Bartley making do with the moral imperatives of the National Rifle Association. He explained to the new doctors that ``of course guns have unappealing overtones, but the crime problem is caused by criminals, not by guns.''
Is this not true only to the extent that it is also true the drug problem is caused by users, and not by cocaine, heroin and hashish? But let it go. Bartley goes on to say ``the current totem of `assault weapons' can be defined only on purely aesthetic grounds, on the appearance of the weapon rather than its performance.''
Really? By this logic, one should not be disturbed on spotting his neighbor shouldering a bazooka because there's really no difference between a tank-killer and a derringer.
Bartley's parroting of the NRA is especially puzzling in view of his praise of historian Gertrude Himmelfarb for declaring ``that much-ridiculed Victorian morality did indeed reduce illegitimacy, drunkenness and crime in the England of its day.'' Of course. Was any historical spadework required? The reduction occurred in America as well as in England, and the day of Victorianism's influence was very long.
What Bartley fails to note is that this social and moral code relied greatly on the aesthetic appearance he derides in connection with gun control and other ``liberal'' concerns. A proper Victorian might have kept guns, but hardly would have made a vulgar display either of the weapons or of propagandizing a spurious ``constitutional'' right to unrestricted possession of them. The gun would not have become a ``totem,'' to borrow a word from Bartley.
Victorianism certainly would have embraced concern that distance be kept between people and dangerous things for fear that the latter might become too familiar and their use reckless. And certainly beyond the pale of Victorianism would have been the NRA's indiscriminate attempt to portray federal law-enforcement agents as Nazi storm troopers. The prohibition would have required no explanation; it would have been understood - a given. NRA paranoiacs, in a Victorian view, would have needed their heads examined.
Regarding drugs, Bartley says the elites had the ``resources to recover'' while large segments of the underclass were sunk. Will any new moral creed thought up by his friends bear on this grievous matter? Or is traffic in drugs as much a matter of economic incentive - the incentive to make it big with a small stake? Is that traffic a function of the free market?
One might hope for more dilation on economic aspects of social and political problems from top-drawer figures like Bartley who remind tirelessly of the bankruptcy of liberalism. Stipulate that. Given that the liberal establishment is defunct, what does the conservative majority offer? Pablum, says Pat Buchanan of the largely secular agenda of the Christian Coalition, but Buchanan's morose. Fiscal order and responsibility, others argue with some reason, and a deliverance from ``big guvmint.'' But deliverance into what? Dare one hope for a system that will make the moral and social value of jobs more accessible and appealing? Prosperity's ability to promote tolerance, goal-setting and striving has always been remarkable, but for many Americans prosperity is either a memory or a fable. What is the difference between a philosophy that tries and fails to reckon with marginalized workers and one that simply shrugs, or natters on about new moral codes?
What's wrong with old work-centered Victorianism? Nothing except that many who have work have too much of it while others have too little and no prospects. It would not be amiss for voices of the unfettered market to gaze now and again upon a dilemma that has harsh and proven consequences that cannot be ignored without costs to those who fancy themselves immune. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star. by CNB