Discussion Group Report

The November Utah Humanist study group discussion focused on the BYU commencement address given by James Q. Wilson, UCLA professor of political science and author of The Moral Sense.

He said, "The world I entered in 1952 was very different from the one you are entering in 1994. By almost any objective measure, it was a less just, more troubled world...

"And yet most Americans felt good about their country. Opinion polls showed that the great majority...had confidence in the leaders of government, business, and other institutions...young Americans expected that their lives would be better than those of their parents, and their children's lives would be better than theirs...

"...we today are an unhappy people who have lost confidence in our political, business, religious, and other leaders, who believe that this nation is on the wrong track, who think that the federal government creates more problems than it solves, and who fear that future generations will be worse off than present ones...

"The reason, I think is that we have come to believe that the American Dreams works for Americans but not for America. The American Dream is this: if you get an education and work hard, you will improve your lot...But when Americans look, not at their own lives, but at America, they see a nation besieged by crime, drug abuse, illegitimate births, incessant public vulgarity, and innumerable lawsuits...

"How can this be? We did as we were told; we improved our lot. But somehow what worked for most individuals did not work for the nation as a whole. We prospered; our cities deteriorated. We raised our children to be decent citizens; some other children joined armed gangs...during the four decades since I graduated from college, the rate of violent crime has increased sevenfold...The divorce rate has more than doubled...the teen-age suicide rate has more than tripled.

"These unhappy trends did not occur because we were unwilling to spend money to prevent them. The amount of government money spent on the poor...increased seven-fold between 1960 and 1990 in constant dollars. Private charitable giving...increased more than three-fold...the extra money...did not purchase what we hoped it would--human happiness...

"But much of this problem is world-wide. Crime, although not violent crime, has been increasing rapidly in almost every industrial nation...

"We are seeing all about us in the entire Western world the working out of the defining experience of the West, the Enlightenment...that extraordinary period in the 18th century when man was emancipated from old tyrannies--from dead custom, hereditary monarchs, religious persecution, and ancient superstitions. It is the period that gave us science and human rights, that attacked human slavery and political absolutism, that made possible capitalism and progress...

"James Madison said that 'republican government presupposes the existence of sufficient virtue among men for self-government'...But what if virtue would be lacking?...Nowhere did the Constitution authorize Washington to purchase virtue...

"The great clash of cultures that now afflicts the world is in no small measure...driven by the conviction of the Islamic world of the Middle East and much of the Confucian world of the Far East that the Western Enlightenment and the...culture that it spawned, are morally bankrupt...no less critical of the West are such places as Singapore that have a secular state, welcome technology and capitalism, and allow women to play a public role but insist that government must be the moral master of its people...Some people [including university intellectuals], challenge the legitimacy of Western culture and the...enlightenment here [in its heartland].

"Let me be clear: I take my place unhesitatingly with the West...our achievements in human dignity, personal freedom, and economic progress dwarf anything that has been accomplished by our rivals save perhaps in a few small city-states...The core value of the American Dream--that...every individual is responsible for what he or she does--will prevail because it will prove to be so useful and so consistent with everyday human existence.

"You can make a difference in all of the ways that are so important. The employee who gives an honest day's work;...The craftsman who builds each house as if he were going to live in it...the neighbors who join together to patrol a neighborhood threatened by drug dealers...--these are the heroes of everyday live. May you join their ranks."