The missing ingredient in American Liberalism is an emphasis on responsibility, according to Dr. Peter J. Van Hook, the presenter at the November meeting of Humanists of Utah. Dr. Van Hook, spoke to the question of "Why Can't We Agree on Anything Anymore?" Van Hook explored briefly the Liberal philosophy of John Locke and our nation's founders, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, etc., which put a premium on the freedom of the individual, a freedom from both secular and theistic authoritarianism. He then explored the communitarian agenda of Amitai Etzioni that maintains individual freedom must be tempered with the good of the community.

"Liberalism, with its definition of individual rights, was an attempt to define some way of living in society over against the authoritarianism of the monarchies of Locke's day. When you get to the colonies, you have this same strain of Liberalism, that is, we are going to form a country that is not going to be authoritarian in character, it's not going to have a monarch. Instead we are going to create a government that is bounded. I think that is an important term. Sometimes we talk about the separation of powers as those groups having power over against the other groups, the legislative, the judicial, the executive. Rather, one really needs to talk about bounded power. What it creates is a system that doesn't work very quickly...I would offer to you tonight that it does work rather well. But you have to give it time and in the modern television age that's the one thing we do not seem to have very much of.

"American society in the modern age has become a paragon of individualism. It's what I would term, in its political life, a decayed Liberalism...What we have now is a society in which people seem to know their rights and privileges but they don't seem to know their responsibilities.

"I submit that one of the things that excited so many people about Colin Powell is that they had a sense that he might be for something, and in his own way, a Liberal. And for the American ear that is still a very attractive thing."

Dr. Van Hook explained that Etzioni's theory of communitarianism, which recommends giving up some individual rights for the good of the community, sounds good in theory but in practice leads to authoritarianism. He cited the history of Germany in the 1920s and 30s as a classic example of the insidiousness of communitarianism. Van Hook said the better solution is that recommended by Harvard Philosopher John Rawl. In his major work, A Theory of Justice, "Rawl defines justice as fairness. This is something quite new in political philosophy; to simply say that to be just, that is to make things right, is simply to be fair, to have a broad notion of what the good is. He puts forword two principles of justice which are formed in an initial position of equality of persons. He says each person has an equal right to the most extensive scheme of basic liberties compatible, and this is the hitch, compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all."

A philosophical theory referring to cultural membership may offer a fairness solution, according to Van Hook. "What that allows us to do then is to say, from a Liberal perspective, that a group may pursue its collective life plan without being a threat or being threatened by the larger American liberal society. This holds out some promise for the kinds of (group) fights we are having now.

"What I'm putting forword tonight is an energetic, indeed an athletic, Liberalism which is for the rights of individuals while recognizing the distinctive character of certain communities of persons. How this is to be worked out in practice is, in my mind, entirely unclear. But we must begin."