I’ve been reading Reinhold Niebuhr for a while now – actually, I finished a collection of his essays, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr, some time ago. My habit is to to use little 3M flags to highlight interesting passages of a book as I read it, and then later to transcribe those passages into quotation files on my computer. I may never look at them again, but there is something about typing out the words that allows them to penetrate deeper into my conscious brain. Such as it is.
Anyway, my late Friday afternoon is that process, and I realized as I typed that Niebuhr had in two short paragraphs very effectively dealt with a passion of the left, pacifism, and one of the right, the sanctity of self-interest.
To wit, pacifism:
It was inevitable that this [the scene at the cross] ultimate illumination should be mistaken again and again in human history for proximate forms of moral illumination and thus lead to pacifist illusions. According to such interpretations, the goodness of Christ is a powerless goodness which can by emulated by the mere disavowal of power. In such interpretations the tragic culmination of the cross is obscured. It is assumed that powerless goodness achieves the spiritual influence to overcome all forms of evil clothed with other than spiritual forms of power. It is made an instrument of one historical cause in conflict with other historical causes. It becomes a tool of an interested position in society; and a bogus promise of historical success is given to it. Powerless goodness ends upon the cross. It gives no certainty of victory to comparatively righteous causes in conflict with comparatively unrighteous ones. It can only throw divine illumination upon the whole meaning of history and convict both the righteous and unrighteous in their struggles. Men may indeed emulate the powerless goodness of Christ; and some of his followers ought indeed to do so. But they ought to know what they are doing. They are not able by this strategy to guarantee a victory for any historical cause, however comparatively virtuous. They can only set up a sign and symbol of the Kingdom of God, of a Kingdom of perfect righteousness and peace which transcends all of the struggles of history.
I suppose conservatives and libertarians will say that they embrace the following words, but my impression is that they believe that there are no bounds to the fruitful rewards of unregulated self interest.
In this country, and in spite of all our weaknesses, our pride and pretensions, certainly there is life. Our national life is based on the vitality of various interests balanced by various other interests. This is the heart of the free enterprise doctrine. These self-interests are not nearly as harmless as our conservative friends imagine them to be. Here we have to violate the parable, and provisionally make judgments and say, “This form of self-interest must be checked.” Or, “This form of self-interest must be balanced by other interest.” Otherwise we will not have justice if the powerful man simply goes after his interest at the expense of the weak.
Finally, a word for both sides – what goes around comes around:
Must we not say to the rich and secure classes of society that their vaunted devotion to the laws and structures of society which guarantees their privileges is tainted with self-interest? And must we not say to the poor that their dream of a propertyless society is perfect justice turns into a nightmare of new injustice because it is based only upon the recognition of the sin which the other commits and knows nothing of the sin which the poor man commits when he is no longer poor but has become a commissar?
Piece of Mindful 