Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

 

The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1948.

Practical philosophies emerge out of necessity.[1] When Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism, the book carried with it a sense of urgency. It stays relevant as a reminder of how easily we can be led astray by following the crowd. She teaches us to look at history as the result of unique and complex conditions. Arendt wants the reader to reflect on the circumstances that have created their views, acknowledge their own fallibility, and to open to the possibility of having it all wrong. Her book is a warning of our tendency to choose simple narratives when other ideas may seem daunting or implicate us somehow. Arendt does not divide the world so neatly into ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’. Instead, she invites readers to a path of redemption. 

The subterranean stream of Western history finally came to the surface and usurped the dignity of western tradition. That subterranean stream of western civilization includes slavery, the suppression of women, anti-Semitism, communism, fascism, colonialism, and imperialism.  

In its early chapters, she reminds the reader that the atrocities of the twentieth century had not ended with the war. Although there may be a temptation to see the Nazis as an isolated phenomenon, the product of a few ‘bad apples’, Arendt reminds us how easy it was for many European populations to adopt the mob mentality that gave rise to extremism. Her concern is that history tends to repeat itself when we absolve ourselves of personal responsibility. If we believe that we would not have been complicit (or even active) in these movements, we may allow our own social behavior to go unchecked. Arendt demands from her reader a personal investment in unlocking the true narratives behind Nazism and Stalinism. By reducing the complex history behind these movements to oversimplified excuses such as ignorance, we fail to be accountable for the past.

So, the book is structured into three essays. Since we are all fallible, she seems to be saying, it is proper to think critically and constructively about our history, avoiding the temptation of simply looking down on those who got it wrong.

First, on antisemitism, she traces the development of anti-Semitism in the 18th and 19th century. She asks if a culture of racism set the terms of Nazi rule, where did it come from? In her description of the conditions that gave rise to the Nazi Party, Arendt is admirable for her humanization of those with whom she contends. Anti-Semitism in Europe arose in the context of the rise of capitalism, which brought about a decline of Jews in government power and wealth. 

q  The Jewish leadership naively thought they could make friends with power, and did not need to make friends with the people.  They had faith in the political state. 

q  The Rothchild family exerted its influence, and also declined in influence.

q  The Jewish family preserved its traditions.

q  Aristocratic anti-Semitism grew as Jewish alliance with the state grew.

q  Banking scandals of 1880 to 1900 turned leftist lower classes against them.

q  Europe developed several anti-Semitic parties.

Many still consider it an accident that Nazi ideology centered around anti-Semitism and that Nazi policy, consistently and uncompromisingly, aimed at the persecution and finally the extermination of the Jews.  Only the horror of the final catastrophe, and even more the homelessness and uprootedness of the survivors, made the Jewish question so prominent in our everyday political life.  What the Nazis themselves claimed to be their discovery and their chief interest have been regarded by public opinion as a pretext for winning the masses or an interesting device of demagogy.  

Her conclusions here offended some communities by its implication that Jewish leaders had been partly complicit in the Holocaust through their complacency. Commentators found Arendt’s conclusions to be dismissive of those who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis, and had faced impossible choices. Only six years after the end of the war these wounds were still very raw. Similarly, in 1963, her essay ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’, published as a series in the New Yorker, resulted in her near-total exclusion from social and academic circles for her claims about ‘the banality of evil’. People wanted to believe that the Nazis were a monstrous aberration who could never come again. She suggested that most were ordinary conformists and followers; the kind of people we can find all too easily in any time.

Second, on imperialism, imperialist policies have brought about the decline of Europe.  She discusses the emergence of racism and imperialism in the 19th and 20th century up to National Socialism. Here she argues that imperialism prepared the ground for totalitarianism and provided the preconditions and precedents for its perpetrators I conceive this book in the context of both Nazi and Bolshevik variety of totalitarianism.  Imperialism grew from 1884 to 1914. It could not have occurred without the enthusiastic involvement of the middle class. Her discussion of imperialism tries to really understand the motivations and incentives that legitimized each new system of oppression and exploitation.   

q  Political awakening of the bourgeois.

q  French use of colonies for national defense.

q  British allowed the conquered people to keep culture and religion.

q  It was caused by overproduction of capital and superfluous money.

q  It represented a movement from production to speculation.

q  Money went first to the foreign lands, and then power.

q  Hobbes is the philosophical foundation of this economic foundation. Since power is only a means to an end a community based solely on power must decay in the calm of order and stability; its complete security reveals that it is built on sand.  Only by acquiring more power can it guarantee the status quo; only by constantly extending its authority and only through the process of power accumulation can it remain stable.  Hobbes’s Commonwealth is a vacillating structure and must always provide itself with new props from the outside; otherwise, it would collapse overnight into the aimless, senseless chaos of the private interests from which it sprang.  Hobbes embodies the necessity of power accumulation in the theory of the state of nature, the condition of perpetual war of all against all, in which the various single states remain in relationship with each other like their individual subjects before they submitted to the authority of a Commonwealth.  This ever-present possibility of war guarantees the Commonwealth a prospect of permanence because it makes it possible for the state to increase its power at the expense of other states.  Hobbes based his position on the proposition that the never-ending accumulation of property must be based on a never-ending accumulation of power.  

q  Alliance between capital and mob was necessary to carry this off.

q  Germany had growth around revolutionary workers.

q  Race is not the beginning of humanity politically, but it is its end.

q  Race motivated imperialism, race-thinking, and decidedly not class-thinking. Racism may indeed carry out the doom of the Western world and of the whole of human civilization.  When Russians have become Slavs, when the French have assumed the role of commanders of a special force, when the English have turned into white people, when Germans become Aryans, then this change will itself signify the end of Western civilization.  For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of humanity but its unnatural death.  

q  Bureaucracy implemented imperialism.

q  Rudyard Kipling built the legends of imperialism.

q  Evolutionary thought of Spencer provided the background for imperial effort.

q  Nazi was pan-German movement; Bolshevism was a pan-Slavic movement.  Both were imperialistic, with tribal theories of chosenness.  Both had conflicts with Judaism.

q  Burke said that rights come from within the nation versus the abstraction of the rights of humanity that, he said, could only to lead savagery.  The conception of human rights, based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such, broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships.  The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.  

Cecil Rhodes said: expansion is everything, these stars, these vast worlds that we can never each.  I would annex the planets if I could.  Others sought solace in political parties.  The slogan “above the parties, and the appeal to people of all parties, and the boast that they would stand far removed from the strife of parties and represent only a national purpose was equally characteristic of all imperialistic groups, where it appeared as a natural consequence of their exclusive interest in foreign policy in which the nation was supposed to act as a whole in any event, independent of classes and parties.  The survivors of the extermination camps, the inmates of concentration and internment camps, and even the comparatively happy stateless people could see without Burke’s arguments that the abstract nakedness of being nothing but human was their greatest danger.  Because of it they were regarded as savages and, afraid that they might end by being considered beasts, they insisted on their nationality, the last sign of their former citizenship, as their only remaining and recognized tie with humanity.  Their distrust of natural rights, their preference for national rights, comes precisely from their realization that natural rights are granted even to savages.  Burke had already feared that natural inalienable rights would confirm only the right of the naked savage, and therefore reduce civilized nations to the status of savagery.  Because only savages have nothing more to fall back upon than the more desperately when they have lost the rights and protection that such nationality once gave them.  Only their past with its entailed inheritance seems to attest to the fact that they still belong to the civilized world. If a human being loses political status, he or she should fall under the protection of abstract rights of humanity.  The opposite is the case.  It seems that to lose political rights means to lose rights of being human.  They have lost those parts of the world and all those aspects of human existence that are the result of our common labor, the outcome of the human artifice.

Third, and finally, on totalitarianism. In analyzing antisemitism, imperialism, and racism, Arendt did not want to provide a causal explanation for totalitarianism, but rather a historical investigation of the elements that “crystallized into totalitarianism.” Totalitarianism is a party in power, based on lies, must now try to rule with facts; it does not succeed.  The leaders regard the wealth of the nation as their personal loot, as in imperialism.  Union of party and state is common. Iron Curtain is madness and unreality.  It destroys sense of justice, morality, and individuality. People become superfluous.  Common experience of isolation prepares the way for totalitarianism. 

What does Arendt understand by the term?[2] Emphasizing its “horrible originality,” Arendt understood totalitarianism to be an entirely new political phenomenon that differed “essentially from other forms of political oppression known to us such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship” (OT, 460) and thus broke with all political and legal tradition. In the 14 chapters of the third part, Arendt analyzes the conditions and features of this “novel form of government” (OT, 460). According to her, crucial factors that made totalitarianism possible included collapsed political structures and masses of uprooted people who had lost their orientation and sense of reality in a world marked by socio-economic transformation, revolution and war. While the leaders of the movements belonged to the “mob” (OT, 326), their many supporters were recruited from these rootless and lonely “masses” (OT, 311) through propaganda (OT, 341): “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” (OT, 474).

Thus, totalitarianism is based on a secular, pseudo-scientific ideology that reduces the complexity of reality to the logic of one idea pretending to be able to explain everything. In its self-understanding, the movement is merely carrying out the alleged laws of nature or history outlined by the ideology. It is quintessential, however, that this “central fiction” a totalitarian system rests upon, is translated into a “functioning reality” (OT, 364) by a “completely new” form of “totalitarian organization” (OT, 364): Characteristically, the state is not a monolithic, strictly ordered system, but has a deliberately chaotic, fluid and shapeless structure with competing institutions and a “fluctuating hierarchy” (OT, 369), which makes predictability, trust and accountability impossible. Above this “maze”, however, “lies the power nucleus of the country, the superefficient and supercompetent services of the secret police” (OT, 420). Thus, the organization combines deliberate chaos with the “iron band” (OT, 466) of total control through extreme coercion and terror.

While the regime openly claims unlimited power and aims at world domination, their “real secret” (OT, 436) are the concentration and extermination camps as their “true central institution” (OT, 438). According to Arendt, the camps “serve as laboratories in which the fundamental belief of totalitarianism that everything is possible is being verified.” (OT, 437). The total terror in the camps is the “essence of totalitarian government” (OT, 466), because here total domination reaches its abysmal goal: To reduce “the infinite plurality” of human beings into one interchangeable “bundle of reactions” and thus eliminate “spontaneity itself” (OT, 438). It seemed as if the real mission of the totalitarian apparatus was to “to make men superfluous” (OT, 445). Therefore, the “hurricane of nihilism” (Canovan 2000, 30) unleashed by the totalitarian regime cannot create an new world order, but ultimately leads to nothing but unprecedented destruction: It even “bears the germ of its own destruction.” (OT, 478).

What makes totalitarianism difficult to understand is not only the gigantic scale of atrocities committed by it, but its senselessness. Arendt maintained that totalitarianism defy common sense understanding, because their crimes cannot be explained by self-interested or utilitarian motives or ends (cf. OT, 440). The camps did not serve evil, but useful purposes like forced labor or slavery, but showed that an “absolute” (OT, viii-ix) and “radical evil” is possible (OT, 443; cf. section 6).

Understanding totalitarianism despite this, is of the utmost political importance, because insight into its structures and mode of operation provides “the politically most important yardstick for judging events in our time, namely: whether they serve totalitarian domination or not.” (OT, 442)

Arendt discusses the transformation of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the non-totalitarian world, and the use of terror, essential to this form of government. Totalitarian movements are fundamentally different from autocratic regimes, as far as autocratic regimes seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition, while totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a prelude to world domination. 

 

... Intellectual, spiritual, and artistic initiative is as dangerous to totalitarianism as the gangster initiative of the mob, and both are more dangerous than mere political opposition. The consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against everything they cannot understand. Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

 

Arendt wrestled with the truth because the alternative was to allow reality to become blurred by what is comfortable. In such blurring, totalitarian movements thrive. For Arendt, a key feature of totalitarianism - in contrast to other forms of tyranny or dictatorship – is the toying with truth, deliberate confusion of fiction and reality, and incessant use of mass media to manipulate the way millions of people experience the world. In our era of fake news, targeted messaging and ‘cancel culture’, there is still something profound in this warning. Arendt is alerting us to the use of propaganda and conspiracy to change the perceived structure of reality on a whim.

A central worry is that these conditions emerge by our own hand. It is the failure to engage critically with our own ideas that draws us into an echo chamber of isolation, detached from the world, and so paving the way for radical ideology. 

Such scholars as Jürgen Habermas have supported Arendt in her 20th-century criticism of totalitarian readings of Marxism. That commentary on Marxism has indicated concerns with the limits of totalitarian perspectives often associated with Marx's apparent over-estimation of the emancipatory potential of the forces of production. Habermas extends that critique in his writings on functional reductionism. The theory of communicative action understands language as the foundational component of society and is an attempt to update Marxism by "drawing on Systems theory (Luhmann), developmental psychology (Piaget, Kohlberg), and social theory (Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, Mead, etc.)" 

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[1] James Reynolds, https://philosophynow.org/issues/148/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism_by_Hannah_Arendt

[2] Tömmel, Tatjana and Maurizio Passerin d’Entreves, "Hannah Arendt", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.)

Political Conversation in the Public Square

 

I present a collection and essays and articles that invites a calm consideration of political ideas and policies. If a reader wants to go directly to my discussion of the two political parties I have an essay based on the Pew Research Center typologies of the coalitions that the Democrat and Republican parties have built and my experience with both.

This essay begins with a reflection upon the difficulty of having a calm consideration of political matters today and concludes with some philosophical references.

 

Political conversation in the public square has become difficult. People give offense and are offended. Political passion has been an important part of America. That passion may be toward a person who generates intense loyalty and intense disgust. That passion may also be in allegiance to the group with which one identifies and against the group viewed as an opponent. 

Thomas Jefferson provides a model in these matters. In his letter to William Hamilton on April 22, 1800, he noted, “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” He goes on to prove this by saying that those in Virginia who remained loyal to the British can testify that he remained friends with them and protected their property.

Placing oneself in the American political setting of the 2020s, it seems like applying the saying of Jesus to love the enemy in the public square is not possible. If we agree upon political and national goals, but disagree upon how to get there, we have some common ground upon which to dialogue. When we disagree about the kind of nation in which we want to live, the basis for dialogue and negotiation becomes unlikely. Therefore, the rhetoric becomes heated. We are no longer simply opponents vying for votes, but enemies involved in what feels like a life-or-death struggle. 

Consider for a moment how the divide affects the Christian community. How does the political progressive who wants to live Christianly love their enemy in that setting? How does the political libertarian or conservative who wants to live Christianly love their enemy in that setting? The preferred option is for each to accuse the other of not living Christianly and thus that Jesus is on one side or the other. 

The progressive part of the political Left is comfortable making liberal democracy the inheritors of the imperialism, colonialism, racism, and male superiority of the past. This leads them to view America and the West as no different from any other religious ideology and tyranny in the world. Such a view of the nation has made this part of the political Left vulnerable to the charge of being anti-American. This charge has a long history, dating back to the sympathies many on the Left had for the Bolshevik Revolution, the Maoist revolution in China, Castro in Cuba, and for communism and socialism during the depression. Such sympathies are well known and well documented. The mistaken involvement in the Vietnam War led to renewed concerns about the American War Machine and the abuse of military might. Such questions are always appropriate. 

Yet, this vulnerability has led the political Left under Barak Obama to target political conservatives through the IRS. Donald Trump was an easy target for the Russia narrative, a clear lie fabricated by the Clinton team and disseminated with the approval of Obama-Biden, this time using the FBI and CIA to take down their political opponent. The accusation of Trump being a fascist, having his own SS troops ready to storm Congress, proved to be wrong and another lie. The January 6 event, which could have been avoided if Trump would have been an adult about losing an election, continues to be labeled an insurrection. This has led to labeling both the “faith and flag” Republican and the populist Right as having violent designs on taking over the country. All this labeling of those on the political Right is a lie, the shiny object that those of the progressive Left want everyone to focus upon so that no one accuses them of disloyalty to the cause and idea of America. 

For the political Right, American history is one of continually expanding freedom. They appreciate the limits placed upon government to encroach upon individual freedom, and appreciate the political and economic views of Adam Smith, John Locke, Kant, Hegel, Edmond Burke, Jefferson, and Madison. The political Left and Right have little common intellectual ground from which to have a political conversation today.

Such hard ball politics by the political Left against conservative opposition generally and against Trump specifically has led to the deepening of concern on the political Right for the freedoms they cherish are going away through the victories of the political Left and their willingness to abuse the power they have. The weaponizing of agencies to further the agenda of the political Left and the weaponizing of government agencies to criminalize traditional views of sexuality concern some on the political Left but is a uniting concern for those on the political Right. Such a view comes across as ignorant and profoundly wrong. 

The country has views related to covid-19 that have become heated differences. Climate change has long been a difficult conversation. The nation of enemies is at war with itself. It is a house divided, as Lincoln put it.

My point is that at this stage in history, it has become difficult to see a peaceful path out of the present debate in the public square. With the depth of feeling and ideological commitment on opposing sides, it is becoming difficult to find anything that holds us together. Loving the enemy in the public square of America today feels impossible. 

            First, some historical context might be helpful. 

It may well be that America does not have arguments; America is an argument – between Federalist and Anti-Federalist world views, strong national government and local control, liberty and equality, individual rights and collective responsibility, color-blindness, and color-consciousness. We will not have consensus on much, and that might be a good thing, for those of us who like a lesser role for the federal government. We need genuine pluralism that respects the right and value of those with whom we disagree. Fighting that descends into physical intimidation of those who are neutral or on the other side is not helpful. However, fighting to make our fights more useful, honest, open to change, and more human, is a potentially productive path. (Eric Liu, “Americans Don’t Need Reconciliation — They Need to Get Better at Arguing,” The Atlantic, November 1, 2016.)

            We live in a politically divisive time. We get into trouble, however, when we usurp the divine prerogative and start assigning our fellow mortals to the way of the righteous or the way of the wicked. What is happening in the country is of deep concern. Hate multiplies hate. Violence multiplies violence. Toughness multiplies toughness. The descending spiral is toward destruction. This chain reaction needs to be broken, or we shall plunge into the dark abyss of annihilation. History is cluttered with the wreckage of communities that surrendered to hatred and violence. The healing of the nation, and even the healing of divided humanity, calls us to follow another way. We need to hear clearly in our time, and let it sink deeply into our souls, “Love your enemies.” In the 1950s and 1960s, many in the civil rights movement recognized that while segregation was abhorrent, they would love the segregationist. This love would be the only path toward beloved and just community. (Martin Luther King Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” in Strength to Love (Fortress, 2010), 50.) I am not sure this generation has the equivalent type of leader on either side of the political divide.

            Second, finding hope in cultivating a spirit of bewilderment.

There is hope for America’s ailing soul. It draws on a standard teaching technique familiar to anyone reading these words: bewilderment. Socrates, that great master of bewilderment, deployed it in the pursuit of wisdom — and to defend themselves, his contemporaries killed him. Zen koans, Sufi riddles, Christian parables (without the added explanations), all are engines of bewilderment. Wisdom is impossible without it. 

In the absence of bewilderment, we become like tyrants: inflexible, certain, over-confident. Rigid oppositional binaries reign supreme. Religion vs. Science, Left vs. Right, Us vs. Them. We are not open to learning from the other. We might even call this the moral theology of the devil in exaggerating all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, right and wrong. These distinctions become irreducible divisions. No longer is there any sense that we might all be at fault, and that we might be expected to take upon our own shoulders the wrongs of others by forgiveness, acceptance, patient understanding and love, and thus help one another to find the truth. In such a devilish moral theology, the important thing is to be right and to prove that everybody else is wrong. This does not exactly make for peace and unity among people.[1]

As we become like tyrants, we also become susceptible to the rhetoric of tyrants. We do not invent our rigid, moralistic binaries. They come from outside us. And when we crave them, we seek out political leaders eager to provide them, despots shouting salvific certainties, red-faced and enraged, promising paradise if only we can rid ourselves of the damned and the unholy. 

We can cultivate bewilderment in ourselves and, by our own example, encourage its cultivation in others. We can admit, with the relief of honesty, that some questions are genuinely difficult. We can reject the rigid binaries forced upon us by a sense of crisis. 

For those who find bewilderment terrifying, who value the integrity of their web of belief, there is an initial shock to the system. But the shock does not last. It quickly gives way to relief, even comfort. You no longer need to exhaust yourself pretending to understand what you do not or making pronouncements about questions that are above your pay grade. You can trade false simplicity for complicated truth. And the resulting worldview is more useful and more beautiful because it genuinely reflects reality. That is why a synonym for bewilderment is wonder, which, at least for me, is not terrifying but exhilarating.[2]

Third, some humility is in order.

            When I look to Jesus to think about how to practice my faith in the political realm, I see no path to glory that sidesteps humility, surrender, and sacrificial love. The path of wisdom in such a political climate is living our political convictions with humility regarding our positions and with compassion that embraces my political other as a brother or sister. 

            One can try to locate sin in other places, such as capitalists, or the wealthy, and we think that if we could just rid the country of them, we would be all right. In part, communism, Nazism, and Islamism have perpetrated great horrors upon humanity precisely because they located sin in something outside themselves that they thought they could remove. People seek a form of holiness that does not face honestly the deceptive quality of the human mind and heart. (Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy. HarperCollins, 2009, 11, 36.) 

            Fourth, developing a discerning mind for deception.

We must learn another difficult truth concerning a human life. Some people are out to deceive us in order that they get what they want from us. This basic selfishness is twisting the legitimate concern we have for our lives into the need to put down others to make us appear better. We have the terrible capacity to lie to ourselves. We will lie over the smallest details of our lives, such as how much we ate today, or our actual height and weight. We may lie about how much alcohol we consume. We lie about the sexual thoughts we have at random moments of the day because such thoughts are not socially acceptable. We lie about our most important life choices. We do not have the internal strength to admit the truth and face the consequences. Therefore, we lie to ourselves. (Cortney Warren, “Honest liars — the psychology of self-deception,” TED talk delivered at TEDx. University of Nevada Las Vegas, May 2, 2014. youtube.com. Retrieved July 31, 2018). In doing so, we lose respect for whatever truth we may have within us or whatever truth that may surrounds us. Losing respect for truth, we lose our love for self and others as well. 

Thus, I hope we can see the wisdom of the observation that if we find ourselves easily offended, it will be because we are deep in self-deception. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Macmillan, 1922), 40.) Our minds have the incredibly capacity to find reasons to believe whatever we want to believe (Voltaire). Psychologists might call such tendencies a reflection of the shadow side of our psyche. The tendency may not be sinful, but it allows us to participate in evil with justification. We cannot rid ourselves of the shadow. We can only become increasingly aware of its game and the signs that usually accompany its expression. (Richard Rohr, “Seeing Our Shadow,” Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation for March 6, 2015. cac.org. Retrieved July 31, 2018.) We do not know ourselves well. Consequently, we cannot even trust our judgment and wisdom completely.

Fifth, learning the path of magnanimity. 

            The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines magnanimity as “behavior that is kind, generous and forgiving, especially towards an enemy or competitor.” We find this description on display in Lincoln’s life and speeches. Lincoln’s second inaugural address (March 4, 1865), which was delivered just weeks prior to his assassination (April 14, 1865), includes these words in closing: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Certainly, Lincoln had the end of the war and reconstruction of the South in mind. One who possesses magnanimity of spirit is not petty. A person with a malicious spirit holds grudges and seeks to do harm, get even. A leader who is characterized by magnanimity will not allow personal or public grievances to get in the way of pursuing the greater good, as we find in Lincoln’s second inaugural. Lincoln looked to reconstruction of the South after the Civil War to bring about full inclusion in the union and a “just and lasting peace” not simply for the United States, but for “all nations.”

            Sixth, the temptation of anger.

Human life, whether in our individual experience or as we become aware of our history, gives us plenty of reasons to be angry. Some people have had to overcome animosity toward people who have a differing skin color and all of us Americans must deal honestly with its birth defect of racism and segregation. My focus in this article is the American experience. The presumption by the mostly north Europeans who settled on this continent that they were superior to the prior inhabitants, that they had the right to import as their individual property members of tribes in Africa sold to them by other tribes, and that the males had superiority over the females, was a profound self-centered and arrogant approach to their privileged status. It has taken much time to gain a moral and just insight in these matters. American institutional life has changed dramatically because of those insights. It has taken a Civil War, a Civil Rights movement, and a Women’s Suffrage movement, to help those changes take place. It took anger properly directed to turn insight into reality.

            Jesus was angry with those in the temple who were selling and buying, overturning tables, and declaring there were turning the Temple into a den of robbers (Mark 11:15-18). He was angry at the saying of long prayers by scribes for the sake of the appearance it gave of their piety, the honor sought by religious leaders like the scribes while in public settings, in synagogues, or at banquets. Not only that, but they will also receive condemnation for the way they devour the homes of widows (Mark 12:38-40=Luke 20:46-47). Paul (Ephesians 4:26-27) could urge his readers to be angry, never forgetting that there is a justifiable anger. One who is not angry when there is cause to be may well open the door to sin. Unreasonable patience nurtures many vices in that it fosters negligence in correcting what is wrong. Paul acknowledges the validity of anger born out of disagreement, but he cautions readers not to allow self-serving tendencies to extend the natural boundaries of our anger.  Paul does not ask us to be emotionless, but neither does he give us the latitude to create an environment for nurturing grudges and rivalry.

            Anger is like a fire in that safely used we derive great benefit, but uncontrolled it can do great damage. We are not to let the sun go down on our anger, allowing resentment to simmer and endanger others. Do not hang on to anger obsessively. Those who live their lives driven by anger eventually pay a bitter personal price. Among the seven deadly sins, anger may be the most fun (Frederick Buechner Wishful Thinking, 1973). We get to lick our wounds, smack our lips over grievances long past, roll our tongues over the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, savor to the last morsel the pain someone gave you and the pain you give back. We have a feast fit for a king. Of course, the chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down so joyfully is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

            I have a particular concern for certain persons, that their anger toward American history and the institutions that have grown out of that history are so evil that the only just response to overhaul them and replace them with something else. The sense of alienation such an analysis brings tends to keep adherents perpetually angry over perceived injustice. The embrace of critical theory tends to locate evil in certain groups, such as oppressors, white people, white men, and heterosexuals, and virtue in certain groups, such as oppressed, black, women, homosexuals (and those who wrestle with gender identity). The obvious problem here is that evil and virtue cuts through the heart of us all. Everyone has an inward battle that tests their character. 

            Bitterness reflects a form of sustained anger that keeps calling to mind experiences of hurt or pain. It is possible to revel in victimhood. Critical theory represents such sustained anger in that it keeps picking at wounds within a society, separating people further rather than finding a way toward common ground and reconciliation. In Latin America, the wound at which they keep picking is between indigenous populations and the descendants of European settlers. The point of such sustained anger is to dismantle the society and institutions in which they find themselves and rebuild. We have all known injured people who just cannot let it go. Some people go to their graves feeling bitter for the way their parents or their spouses or their children failed them. Or they castigate themselves for some missed opportunity decades in the past. Bitter talk, when it continues for an exceedingly long time without let-up, causes terrible emotional harm to the speaker — not to mention misery for everyone who must listen to their complaints. Such sustained anger blocks thinking rationally and seeking reasonable courses of action.

From whence does the anger arise. Genesis 2-3 suggests that the temptation contained in eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that of putting ourselves in the position of a judge. We have the authority to judge our beliefs and actions and the authority to judge the beliefs and actions of others. When others to do not see things the way we do, it becomes a small step to be angry. Accepting that only God has the right to judge is an act of humility, but all of us take the path of Adam and Eve and arrogantly assume the right to judge right and wrong and be angry when others do not coincide with our judgment. In our setting, the tribe-like adherence to set of beliefs and actions assumes the right of judging one’s own group as right and labeling other groups as evil. By repeating in a boring fashion, the decision of Adam/Eve claim the position of judge, humanity continues its self-destructive course of divisiveness that tends toward violence.

Anger is usually something we experience as an outburst, learn what we can from it, and move on to a flourishing human life. Anger inhibits rational thought and action. It distorts our perception of history and the world. However, the sustained anger in the political conversation moves against this observation and ought to be of concern.

            I want to admit that I have anger as well. It can hook by dark side. If I were to launch on the progressive, it would come from a place in which I wonder if their desire is to destroy the country. Thus, if I wanted to destroy country, I would do things to take away its energy independence it earned by letting the domestic market of oil production expand. I would do so my stopping an oil pipeline, make fracking and vertical drilling prohibitive, and increase taxes and regulation on vehicles with the internal combustion engine. I would keep the national debt as high as possible, creating the conditions for a future economic collapse. I would obliterate the physical boundaries, destabilizing local communities as much as possible. I would destroy trust the electoral elections by refusing to ensure the identity of voter. I would not have concern about the increase crime because it destabilizes local communities. I would agitate the differences that a diverse culture has by creating a victim/persecutor relation. I would make America deny its vital role in preserving freedom in the world by envisioning it as an oppressor like so many other nations. I would enlist Big Tech to stifle free speech of those who oppose my progressive agenda, labeling anything not in line with progressive ideas as a threat democracy and as hate speech, creating an alliance between my political party and the wealthiest of Americans in social media. I would compel religious communities to adapt to my progressive understanding of virtue and the good life, thereby obliterating the needed distinction between church and society or pushing religious communities to the margins, thereby reducing their cultural influence. I would continue using COVID-19 as a model for limiting freedom. The point of all these behaviors is the destabilization of the already loose bonds that hold a free society together. Such destabilization will act as pressure that it will open society to the imposition of a progressive utopia that would be impossible without some form of totalitarianism, as Arnold Toynbee suggested, a soft tyranny. It would lack concentration camps, but it would be tyranny. 

            I share my anger to admit that I have a dark side as well. I do not view myself as being on a morally higher ground than the progressive. I do not want to think that one-fourth to one-third of my country want to destroy it. Thus, the intent of the following reflections on current political conversation is to consider political ideas with some calm and rationality.  

A simple truth needs some recovery: the way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness, for only the words of a loving person can be heard (Henry David Thoreau).

            

            

            I would like to offer a brief reflection on some sources in philosophical literature.

In philosophy, these are matters of practical reason. In Laws (636de), Plato considers that it does not matter if laws come from the gods. What matters is how human beings practice them, thereby affecting the common of good of the citizens. I think we need this reminder today. One of the major world religions, Islam, believes its laws are from God, but seems not to care how its Sharia law affects how people relate to each other. Within America, some Christians appeal to the Bible for their liberal or conservative political ideas. I think it best to leave aside these considerations and deal directly with the best way to govern a people. The debate between liberal and conservative concerns the best means for governing people toward a good society, in which people will have the opportunity to be happy. One of the points Aristotle makes in Politics, I.1 (1252a), is that every society of human beings is organized to accomplish some good for its members. If we look for the motive of any human action, it must lay in some perceived or apparent good. Governance takes many forms. In human history, most forms of governance have involved one person, family, or group ruling the masses. A few in history have had some form of democracy. Today, the contrast is between various forms of democracy, military dictatorship, rule by thugs (gangs), or communism. The Enlightenment vision, rooted in some Christian principles, was to expand the liberty of individuals, protect private property against rulers, and refuse to grant any religion political priority. At the time, such principles required great intellectual defense. These principles led to a “balance of powers” among legislative, executive, judicial, local, and the people. It led to a vision of a people free to speak, to write, and to organize. It involves freedom from government to seize the person or property of individuals. It involves the right to a speedy trial. In America, such freedom for individuals is intuitive. Yet, throughout human history, and many societies today, government has no such respect for its own citizens. The debate over the form of governance is a moral act. Human beings are seeking, through listening to history, as well as experience and rational reflection upon them, a well-ordered society that accomplishes a good end. We do not act arbitrarily. We act with specific ends in view and with rationality. We are political animals, Aristotle says, in this sense. Political arrangements are the natural expression of human beings gathering as a society.

Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) proposed the notion that human beings are naturally at war with each other. As social creatures, we are a bundle of desires that conflict with the desires of others with whom we are in society. We are in a state of perpetual war, until Leviathan arrives on the scene. The only reason for a political order is that it imposes peace upon us through its executive, legislative, and judicial powers. It imposes peace through its laws. The fault of Hobbes, I think, is two-fold. One is the fault that Plato points out in Laws when confronted by the argument that political states, and by extension individuals, are naturally at war with each other. His concern is that if the only thing that matters is power, then we would have to give up on rational discourse and the notion of the highest good. Two is that he does not acknowledge the possibility that governance is an important part of human flourishing. Individuals will not experience the fullness of their potential, and therefore happiness, unless they are part of a political order that respects their happiness in some way. When rulers have concern only for their personal happiness, the citizens will suffer.

            In contrast, John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (1690) gets it right. He discusses the natural state of humanity as well. We are naturally free to use our possessions, especially our bodies, in any way we choose. We are naturally equal, so that one person has no natural right to be our master. Locke is laying before us the basis for a moral society rooted in liberty. The crucial point is liberty, based upon the notion that your life, your body, is your property. God has given no one, and especially any form of government, the right to this, the most precious property you have. Based upon this idea of property, you have a right to any inheritance you receive from your ancestors, and you have a right to the fruits of your work. You have a moral obligation, out of “charity,” toward those in need, lest they become slaves.

            Locke raises the question of legitimacy of governing power. A legitimate form of government is one that respects freedom and equality. If a government is in power because of oppression of its citizens, and therefore the use of raw power, the government has no legitimacy. Such rule by fear rather than the internal bonds of the desire for mutual common good is a crucial factor in the legitimacy of a government. This raises the question of the legitimacy of many governments in the world. 

The problem of the position of Locke is that culture is a shaping factor in the type of government for which a people will express support. Thus, a sizeable part of our world today would vote for the imposition of Islamic law, which would prohibit the free exercise of religion, the establishment of Islam as the official religion, limit the role of women, and so on. From their cultural perspective, constitutional democracy and its freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, press, and so on, are an affront to the establishment of an Islamic society. They are right, of course, which then suggests that we have a disagreement over the proper ends of human political activity. For Locke, a full set of notions, such as private property, liberty, toleration of opinion, and consent from the governed, are part of a legitimate governing authority. For the Islamic fundamentalist, legitimate government is that which seeks to create a culture favorable to people accepting and abiding by Islam. When disagreement is over proper ends of government, we are in a situation of basic assumptions or propositions. These are difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate or reason. At this point, “power,” in every sense, political, military, economic, education, technology, and so on, becomes important for the survival of either side.

            Spinoza, in his Tractatus Theologic-politicus (1670) argues that given the diversity of human understanding, citizens within a political order need the freedom to make up their own minds. Although citizens surrender some of their individual freedom to participate in a political order, they do not surrender all of it. In fact, a state will secure itself in power if it grants freedom to its citizens. Although those in power will do what they wish, they put their power in jeopardy if they deny to their citizens basic rights and freedom. In the concluding chapter, he argues that if those in power try to use the law to protect them from making bad choices, thereby limiting freedom, it will do long-term moral harm. Morality must arise out of free choices, not the imposition of government. 

            All this is to say that cultures are not equal, and the belief that they are equal will hold peoples back in advancing human flourishing on a global scale. The point is that liberty and rational discourse to resolve differences may be embraced differently by a people with their histories, but they still need to be embraced. 

            Pluralism assumes the legitimacy of rational disagreement in the public square. Some persons will have a curious blend of absolutism while embracing a form of relativism. Truth may be contextual, but they forget this when the encounter someone who disagrees with their politics.

Thus, one can be so embedded in their position that the only reason to oppose one’s ideas is lack of intelligence or emotional immaturity. The failure to respect those who differ enough to grant that they may differ for good reasons is a significant failure to respect the pluralism of the public square. Relentless explanation of your position, one more speech, will not necessarily persuade someone who disagrees with you. To say your opponent was simply angry is to suggest that if they were to just calm down and be rational, they would agree with you. This position fails to realize that sometimes our passions rise precisely because we have the pondered the matters before our nation, perceive great danger, and act passionately. 

One can also assume that the politically Other never acts out of concern for the public good. This form of argument is deigned to deceive and psychologically manipulate others into questioning their perceptions of what they are seeing in the world. It suggests that they question the sanity of anyone who disagrees with them. In other words, the form of argument involves gaslighting opponents. This belief in the hollowness of the moral standing of the political opposition gives one a sense of moral entitlement and arrogance. One stands on higher moral ground than does the opposition. Therefore, any dissent must arise out of cynical obstructionism. One can view oneself as on the side of the angels. Demonizing the opposition, comparing to Nazis, fascists, communists, and so on, denies respect for the opposition.

            The danger to liberty is clear. Suppose those in political power think they know what decision the people should make. They have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than do the masses. They have the power to remove alternatives in smoking, green products, green energy, and so on. The enlightened impose their vision on the people, while individuals freely pursuing happiness is not sufficient. Tyrants around the world denounce free markets, voluntary exchange, reduced private property rights, profits, and competition. They want monopoly. Those who gain power in a democracy can act like tyrants as they restrict the freedom of others, undoubtedly because they have more knowledge and morality than the rest. 

            Believing in the morality of their end, any means necessary becomes legitimate, such as ignoring the Constitution, shouting down opposing speakers, lying about themselves, lying about the opposition. It all serves a moral purpose. One believes in the goodness of oneself and one’s group so deeply that morally questionable means become virtuous.

            In Laws, Plato has had his Athenian stranger have a thorough discussion of the laws of the state that arises out of a consideration of drunkenness, which, he concludes, brings us to a second childhood, making us forget what we have learned. The education of soul that life provides is something drunkenness makes us forget. It will lead to depravity of soul. The conclusion of this book is that statecraft is a matter of soul (650b). As the Athenian stranger puts it, “This then—the discovery of the natures and conditions of men's souls—will prove one of the things most useful to that art whose task it is to treat them; and that art is (as I presume, we say) the art of politics: is it not so?” The art of politics requires appreciation of the human soul. Put differently, we need to have a proper grasp of human nature, of that which enlivens humanity, to make political judgments.

            Human beings have a natural inclination to care for self and for those nearest to them. This point is not new. Aristotle, in Politics (II.3), argues against the collective notions Plato put forward in The Republic. Aristotle makes the point that what is common to many receives the least care, for we take greatest care of what belongs to us than what we share with others. We pay less attention to what the responsibility of everyone is. If someone else is responsible to do something, we will pay less attention to it. In contrast, we will take greater care for what we consider our responsibility. In this way, each of cares for a smaller portion of the whole. For him, this realistic approach makes caring for the things of society manageable, for each of us has care for a small part. Now, this natural self-interest, I think, is quite appropriate. We have a brief time in which to live. We inhabit a limited space. We rightly care for the unique life we must live. We ought not expect other people to place our interest ahead of their interest. I am not referring to selfishness. I am referring to genuine, even God-given, caring for the unique life God has called us to live. We have the capacity to act without regard for self-interest and to act for the common good when the situation calls us to do so, but under everyday circumstances, we care for the closest to us.

             Therefore, those who envision, plan, risk, and produce, need to reap the rewards of their efforts, which government respects in its tax and regulation policy. If the government respects the simple reality of human nature, it will show it in such policies. Tax and regulation policy will change the behavior of individuals if they think government does not respect what they have given through their passion and planning. As the saying goes, if you take from Peter to pay Paul, you always make Paul happy. If one makes Paul out to be a victim, it can seem like a moral act to take from Peter. One forgets the risks Peter took to have anything from which you can take to give to Paul. One forgets the faith and hope Peter had in the future that you have now taken and given to Paul. One forgets the love Peter showed for himself and his family to produce the way he did. And “you” must have more than power than either Peter or Paul in this scenario to compel this behavior. “You” have not forgotten Peter in one sense, for he, the one who has produced, is your target. Adam Smith said it directly when he observed that the butcher, brewer, and baker do not act out of benevolence, but of regard for the interests nearest to them, but doing so in a way that meets a need we as consumers have. Such producers are not perfect or any different from anyone else, so government can break quench their passion to produce. As we care for our legitimate personal needs and the needs of family, we learn the legitimate needs of others. This reflects the mutuality, sociality, and togetherness of human beings that is such a deep dimension of human nature. 

            Such are the reasons for a strong, independent, and vibrant civil society. When government provides the political structure that protects the individual right to pursue happiness, protect private property, protect citizens from criminal elements, and keep the nation at peace, the government has done it can for the noble cause of the common good. The purpose of governing is to provide a context that enables citizens to pursue their interests through their choice, with minimal frustration. The more government interferes with the liberty of its citizens, the more it places the health of the nation at risk. 

            Skepticism regarding what government can accomplish is a healthy thing. If one can rid oneself of the idea that one is part of an anointed class who will finally get it right, then one is prepared for a realistic view of political arrangements. The proper political structure will not solve the problems humanity faces. Humanity has problems deeper than what political arrangements can solve. We bring these deeper problems with us into our involvement in government. Those who gain political power are one with the rest of their citizens in their struggle with their darkness and the finitude of their knowledge, reasoning, and action. American history is testimony to the fact that the political class can fail the American people, the Jacksonian era, the period leading to the Civil War, chief among them. One could make that case since the downfall of the Soviet Union as well.

            Thomas Paine warned in his book Common Sense that "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." The founders of America recognized that, after a few thousand years of civilization and multiple, painful attempts by governmental leaders to create “fair” societies, the best hope for humankind was to construct a society of freedom, where individuals can freely choose to do business with one-another (or choose not to). What politician is so “moral,” so knowledgeable, so pure, so just, so good, that they, alone, can determine what is “fair” for everybody?

In Politics, VI.5, Aristotle makes the point that the objective of legislators should be to make the state stable, and “not to make it too great a work, or too perfect.” As is typical of Aristotle, he points to extremes, and then urges the value of a “mean,” a virtue human beings can accomplish, rather than settling for hellish existence or trying to establish heaven on earth. This view is consistent with that of John Locke, in his Essay on Human Understanding, Book IV.14. He uses the metaphor that knowledge of many things that concern us are always in twilight. Our knowledge is always straining to figure out what it sees. He seemed to contrast himself with Plato, who had the confidence that some people, philosophers, could escape the shadow world of the cave and emerge into the bright sunshine. I am with Locke, at least when it comes to the confidence human beings can have in running government. No one has enough knowledge to know what is for the common good. The political class does not know what citizens need better than do the citizens.

Karl Popper (“Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition,” Conjectures and Refutations, p. 131), says that what is, in terms of political arrangements, always gives us something to criticize and change. His concern is that too many such social reformers take the unrealistic approach of wanting to wipe the canvas clean and start from nothing. He is referring to the conceit exhibited by Plato. In The Republic, Plato presents in 501aff, the notion of wiping the slate clean of any pre-existing city and constructing something entirely new. He furthers the conceit by proposing that only philosophers can have the knowledge necessary to guide the city for the common good. In Laws, he considers the possibility that such rulers could kill anyone who does not agree with their notion of the common good. As Popper observed, if one were to start over with a new blueprint, which is impossible, one would have to soon adjust anyway. Such conceit reveals itself in the political temptation “to remake America” and fundamentally transform it. Social contract theory in philosophy imagines a hypothetical, inhuman situation of rational people designing political arrangements. Revolutionaries, reactionaries, and terrorists of all stripes, who are all romantics of a type, engage in the criticism of the present and imagining something different based upon their version of utopian ideal. In contrast, as noted by John Kekes (A Case for Conservatism, 1998) existing political arrangements are that with which we must work.

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[1] —Thomas Merton, “The Moral Theology of the Devil,” New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions, 2007), 97.

[2] —Alan Levinovitz, “In Praise of Bewilderment,” The Hedgehog Review, August 24, 2022. https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/in-praise-of-bewilderment.