Why Return to the Enlightenment?

The reasons America needs to recapture the spirit of the Enlightenment include:

• For the next generation, at least, the United States will be the leading power in the world. In spite of continual criticism of America and Americans, we are looked up to as a model by much of the world. Without American leadership and resources, living with or meeting the challenges of the 21st century will be extremely difficult.
• To meet these challenges, American leaders need to be fully aware of the nature of the world's problems, and willing and able to employ the best scientific thinking to ameliorate these problems. Where answers are not easy to come by, they need to commit adequate resources to find answers.
• The selection of America's leaders and of the policies they advocate has come to be determined by the attitudes and values of the general public, or of a particularly ignorant subgroup of the public that may be regarded as a party's "base". A widely admired and highly educated elite with the self-confidence to take and explain positions that run counter to the thinking of the people no longer exists. Too often our political and even opinion leaders are content to follow rather than lead the public.
• The American public appears increasingly to accept a narrow, nationalistic view of the world, and of American interests in it. To the extent this is not so, many leaders continue to believe it is so, and to support policies reflecting a narrow and selfish nationalistic vision.
• The business community that dominates the funding of political campaigns is unwilling to look beyond the next quarter. For this reason, it is unwilling to support raising the taxes that the country needs to fulfill its national and international responsibilities. In view of the average person's natural aversion to taxes, the result is a growing and potentially disastrous deficit.
• Since the Scopes Trial in the 1920s, the American public has become more and more attached to primitive religious beliefs, while the rest of the modern world has moved in the opposite direction. Recent public opinion polls show that more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in evolution. President Bush caters to this ignorance by suggesting that creationism has as much right to be taught in the schools as evolution. Condemnation of homosexuality continues to be a common political platform, one long since abandoned in most developed states.
• In this atmosphere of ignorance, our leaders no longer evince a "decent respect for the opinions of mankind." In the face of the opposition of most of the developed world, the President refuses to agree to the Kyoto Protocols to safeguard the environment. The Administration has refused to accept the International Criminal Court, generally accepted by the rest of the world. It has even threatened to withhold aid from any country that will not agree to a special exemption from court jurisdiction for all Americans. The Administration supports the continued use of the death penalty, although the rest of the modern world has rejected it. The government refuses to crack down on torture, in spite of worldwide condemnation of America's treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, and secret prisons in the Arab world. Few Americans stand up to the mob mentality that justifies such cruelties at the level of mass opinion.
• The evangelical Christianity that has become the most popular form of Protestantism, and that is endorsed by political leaders up to the level of the Presidency, is the reason for the amazing popularity of the "Left Behind" book series authored by LaHaye and Jenkins. Selling over 50 million copies, these books cover the events immediately before and after the Second Coming of Christ, an account originally based on the Book of Revelation. Polls show that 59% of Americans believe that the events in Revelation will come true. This mass psychosis is not merely a curious fact. On the one hand, it has made millions of Americans fervent supporters of Jewish control over the holy lands, because the prediction is that they must be returned to Jewish control before the return of Christ. (The fact that the return will require the killing or conversion of all Jews is not emphasized in discussions with outsiders.) It has also made many believers see a catastrophic war initiated by events in the Middle East, including a nuclear war, to be a natural and even desirable fulfillment of prophecy. (Sadly, the Muslim world has millions who may also welcome a cataclysmic "return of the Mahdi", an attitude that has led some to say that no Muslim need fear a nuclear war.) With such apocalyptic thinking in the background, the government can only be weakened in its attempts to prevent the most dangerous of outcomes.

Other Voices

We are by no means the only ones concerned with these issues. Our approach is reflected in an Op-Ed (NY Times 1/26/06) by Felix Rohatyn* on why we should consider the thinking of the rest of the world when considering the advisability of maintaining the death penalty. He writes:

The Supreme Court is our most respected institution. Whether it is conservative or liberal is important; but it is even more important that it be enlightened. It must show understanding, if not respect, for other people's beliefs and laws, and occasionally be willing to support reasonable changes. Our Constitution, itself, was an extension of Enlightenment ideas that were incubated on the Continent. It certainly did not spring up in a vacuum, but was affected by strains of political thinking in Europe.

In a recent essay in the New Yorker, Michael Specter* ("Political Science: The Bush Administration's war on the laboratory", 3/13/2006) points out:

Since the Enlightenment, scientific enterprise has been defined by an ethic of independent inquiry and by reliance on data that can be observed, tested, analyzed, and repeated. The scientific method has come to shape our notion of progress and of modern life.

Specter details how the Bush people, sometimes with the public behind them, are moving us away from this tradition. For example, to satisfy its religious constituency, the Administration is making it hard to control the birth rate or genital diseases through methods other than abstinence. A new vaccine has been developed against HPV, the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United State (it causes genital warts and is the primary cause of cervical cancer). More than fifty percent of Americans become infected at some time. In a test of the vaccine with twelve thousand women, it appeared to be 100% effective. Yet the Bush Administration and its allies oppose mandatory vaccination. They see it as an invitation to promiscuity. They make much the same argument against condoms. Throughout the world, the Administration has cut aid to any group promoting the use of condoms. Administration representatives avoid discussion of the failure rate at home or abroad of abstinence programs, which have been notably ineffective.

Specter then goes on to consider the effects of Administration limits on stem cell research. One expert tells Specter "What we are seeing is the empowerment of ideologues who have the ability to influence science far more than ever before." The growing danger of throwing Darwinism out of the schools rests on a solid foundation of public ignorance. More than half of the population believe that humans were created directly by God. Only 22% agree with the idea that we evolved from an earlier species.

Garry Wills* wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed (11/4/04):

America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values — critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more: a poll taken just before the elections [2004] showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believed Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.

Wills writes that our European allies no longer understand this America. They see us becoming more and more like the fanatics with whom we are said to be at war. He asks "Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists". He concludes: "Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment."

* A wealthy New York investment banker, Felix Rohaytn, was President of New York's Municipal Assistance Corporation and Ambassador to France. Michael Spector is a well-known writer or reporter for the New Yorker. Garry Wills is a highly-regarded historian. Although he has written on many topics, he has specialized on the Founding Fathers.

The Menu.

Some of the topics the site will address are suggested by menus surrounding the text on the home page. The site will proceed in two directions. The first is discursive and broadly philosophical. Essays will consider intellectual and policy issues that bedevil modern society. These discussions may inspire visitors to consider the issues raised at greater length. The essays will periodically be revised, improved, and expanded. Paralleling the essays will be a blog devoted to Enlightenment issues, particularly as they are discussed in the media. The second, or research, direction of the site will concentrate on comparing countries, societies, and institutions in order to better evaluate the problems that many countries face. Solutions will be looked for, but not necessarily found. The general discussion of comparisons, initially included among the essays, will be supplemented by detailed comparisons as the Network expands.

The consideration of international comparisons is a continuation of earlier research efforts by the webmaster (Compare R. D. Gastil, Cultural Regions of the United States, 1975, and R, D. Gastil Freedom in the World, annual volumes 1978 to 1989). Unlike the latter series, however, the purpose will not be to classify or rate societies. It will rather be an attempt to understand the ways in which societies differ in specific areas and to consider how societies might learn from the experiences of one another. Of course, we will be particularly interested in what policy changes the United States might make on the basis of the experience of others.