It's easy to be right, but hard to be wise
"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." - Learned Hand
This is my third post on Aurelian Craiutu's book Why Not Moderation: Letters to Young Radicals, which was released Oct. 12, 2023. The first post about why I'm reading it is here. The second post, an interview with Craiutu, is here.
In June, I went through Yuval Levin's American Covenant
In May, I went through Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge
In April, I went through John Inazu's book Learning to Disagree.
In March, I went through Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave.
In February, I went through Nick Troiano’s The Primary Solution.
In January, I went through Michael Wear’s The Spirit of Our Politics.
The book of the month schedule is here.
Here is a thought exercise. Read the following quote, and see if you can guess which historical figure said it.
"We want to substitute, in our land, morality for egotism; probity for honor; principles for customs; ethics for propriety; the rule of reason for the tyranny of fashion; disdain for vice for disdain for misfortune; self-respect for insolence; spiritual grandeur for vanity; love of glory for love of money; good men for good society; merit for intrigue; genius for wit; truth for brilliance; the charm of happiness for the boredom of sensual pleasure; human greatness for the pettiness of the great; a magnanimous, powerful, happy people for an easy, frivolous, and miserable people: that is, all the virtues and all the miracles of the republic for all the vices and all the absurdities of the monarchy."
Before I tell you who said this, let's look at bit closer at what the speaker is trying to get across. There is an emphasis on authenticity and pure motives. These are the premiere forms through which virtue is said to move. We want "principles" — true beliefs held deep in our hearts — rather than "customs": those tired and false forms which anyone can mimic, regardless of what they truly believe.
Also interesting: an emphasis on condemning "vice" over and above "misfortune." This is an emphasis on accountability, on personal responsibility.
And the speaker is laser focused on personal character. We want "good men" rather than "good society," he says. The society he is critiquing is "frivolous" and those considered great in dominant culture are actually petty and engaged in "the boredom of sensual pleasure."
So, who is the speaker?
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It is Maximilien Robespierre, a leader of the French Revolution who presided over, and argued for, the Reign of Terror. He was born in 1758 and died in 1794. These words are from a speech he delivered on Feb. 5, 1794, called "Report on the Principles of Political Morality."
Aurelian Craiutu devotes several pages, in his book Why Not Moderation?, to a study of Robespierre and the Jacobin revolutionaries. He points out that Robespierre had unmatched rhetorical skills and used that charismatic talent to "simplify choice and eliminate doubt and hesitation." He stood out for his "moral clarity."
But Craiutu observes two things about Robespierre that stood out to me.
First, Craiutu wonders how Robespierre "justified" his "Manichaeism1 and extreme pursuit of virtue, purity and justice."
The Jacobins, Craiutu writes, had a "strong belief" that "they were instruments of Providence invested with a holy mission: to build the temple of liberty and hasten the dawn of universal felicity on Earth" (96).
That's interesting. I'm not used to thinking of the Reign of Terror as a religious movement. And some may take issue with this characterization, given the strong anti-religious influences inside the revolution. But anger against organized religion doesn't preclude a sense of divine mission.
And then secondly, he notes, "Robespierre's view of power rested on a radical conception of virtue and equality that paid no heed to tradition, history, and human nature" (emphasis mine).
Craiutu has described two significant factors that were present in the religious community in which I was raised, which I wrote about in my second book, Testimony.
Craiutu adds: "The case of Jacobinism is instructive because its radical style of politics still has many enthusiastic fans around the world, who regard their political adversaries as the embodiment of evil engaged in dark conspiracies and acting under the impulse of demonic influences" (98).
"The uncompromising soldiers of virtue who embrace Manichaeism see themselves engaged in holy crusades meant to rid the sinful world of occult evil forces and demonic powers."
Matthew D. Taylor's new book, The Violent Take It By Force, details some of these modern movements who talk about their political opponents as being controlled by demons, or in some cases, describe their opponents as literal demons. I wrote about Taylor's work last year for Yahoo News.
The religious leaders mentioned in Taylor’s book certainly believe they are on the side of righteousness and refer to their political opponents as forces of darkness and demonic influence. And they also come from a stream of American Christianity that rose, in the 1970’s, out of a rejection of traditional religion. Along the way, many of these religious revolutionaries rejected many things about tradition, institutions, formalism, and history.
In Robespierre's case, he relied on his self-certainty and his self-righteousness to embrace a hubristic sense of originality and to argue that "terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue."
This rhetoric led to the Reign of Terror in France in the years after the revolution of 1789. It was an extraordinary and horrific bloodletting, which included indiscriminate massacres, mass executions, mob violence, and the breakdown of social order. At least 17,000 people were executed, many by guillotine and without due process, another 10,000 died in prison, according to a historical study.
Robespierre himself died a bloody and untimely death at age 36, executed by guillotine without a trial.
All of this tyranny and terror came from those who claimed that they were on the side of the angels, fighting the forces of darkness. They said they were fighting for liberty.
But "the spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right," wrote Learned Hand, a respected American federal judge and writer from the 20th century.
This decision to reject certainty while embracing empiricism and moderation will never excite the immature and the weak, Craiutu writes.
"It is more difficult to be a moderate than make one's journey along the extremes, where the edges and borders serve as signposts and guides," he argues. "It is much more difficult to take 'the wide and unhedged middle way,' where there are few signposts, and you must rely on your judgement, knowledge, and intuition at all times" (153).
He quotes Montesquieu, the 18th-century French judge and political philosopher: "It is always easier to follow one's strength than to check it ... it is easier to find extremely virtuous people than extremely wise men."
It is easy to find those who proclaim themselves and their allies "extremely virtuous." It calls to mind Yuval Levin's marvelous line that we should aim to draw "reasonably virtuous people into public service."
The reasonably virtuous type is, in Craiutu's view, more capable of obtaining and exercising wisdom than those who consider themselves truly or extremely virtuous, or on the side of righteousness.
These are the men and women who aspire not to "power, positions and status," Craiutu writes. "Instead, their priority is to strengthen the bonds that keep people together and sustain their free way of life" (162).
That is as succinct and clear an expression of the moderate's mission, purpose and priority that I can summon to mind.
The term is used here to describe an approach to life that divides everything into clear categories of black and white, good and evil.