Why This Book
I HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK because I am convinced that there is a way to end most evil.* And ending evil is the most important task humans can ever undertake.
The only proven way to achieve this on any large scale is the American value system. These values are proclaimed on every American coin: “Liberty,” “In God We Trust,” “E Pluribus Unum.” Each one is explained at length, and each one is adaptable to just about any society in the world.
I have written this book with a number of audiences in mind:
It is written first for Americans who already affirm American values. To those who would argue that this is an unnecessary exercise in “preaching to the choir,” I would say that, unfortunately, this is not the case. Most of the choir have forgotten the melody. Few Americans can articulate what is distinctive about American values, or even what they are.
There is, in fact, a thirst among Americans for rediscovering and reaffirming American values. I know this from my daily radio show, and I know this from a personal experience. A few years ago, at a public forum at the University of Denver, I was asked by the moderator, former Colorado senator Bill Armstrong, what I thought the greatest problem confronting America was. I answered that it was that the last two generations of Americans have not communicated what it means to be American to their children. Someone in the audience videotaped my response and put it on YouTube, where millions of people have seen it. A lot of Americans realize we have forgotten what we stand for.
The second audience consists of those—Americans and all others—who either do not believe that the American value system is as described, or that it is the best ever devised, or that there is even such a thing as a specifically American value system. I welcome these readers. I have in many ways designed this book for them.
The third audience is non-Americans. As this book goes to press, it is finally becoming obvious that the European attempt to create a welfare state alternative to the American model has failed. Begun after World War II, the secular welfare state offered Europeans and sympathetic non-Europeans an alternative to American religiosity and to what the welfare state’s supporters depict as cutthroat, heartless American free market capitalism. But some fifty to sixty years later, it is clear that this state is economically—and, as I show in the book, morally—unsustainable. Of the two democratic models—the European and the American—only the American one works and can endure. And the beauty of it as far as non-Americans are concerned is that it does not demand that any group give up its national or religious culture (except insofar as the culture holds values in conflict with the American value system). On the contrary, Americanism, as this value system is called, wants all peoples to retain their national culture and allegiances.
A word about the way arguments are formulated here: I make a generalization and then support it with one or more examples. To those readers who object to generalizations, I respond: First, there is no wisdom without generalizations. Generalizations are what enable us to make sense of the world. If one cannot generalize, one cannot see patterns, and therefore one cannot make sense of reality. “Seat belts save lives” is a generalization. Now, everyone knows that sometimes seat belts actually cause the death of a driver or passenger. Does that invalidate the generalization? Of course not. The existence of exceptions does not invalidate a generalization. Moreover, if we could not make this particular generalization, many people would die needlessly. Therefore, the objection to a person making a generalization cannot be “You’re generalizing,” as if doing so is inherently wrong. The only valid objection to a generalization is “Your generalization is untrue.” For that reason I always offer examples to illustrate the generalization.
One major goal of this book is to present as thorough a dissection of Leftism as has been written. There are many brilliant works on aspects of the Left—and I have greatly benefitted from many of them. But what we need most—and if I did not believe this was needed, I would not have devoted so much time to writing this book—is an overall explanation of the inherent moral and intellectual defects of Leftism, along with an explanation of why so many people believe in it despite its terrible track record. Still the Best Hope is the product of a lifetime’s thought and study. I began formal study of the Left while in graduate school at the Russian Institute of Columbia University’s School of International Affairs and have never stopped.
As I repeatedly make clear, I almost never judge the motives or the character of people with Left-wing views. I do not for many reasons, but chief among them is that I know personally many people—in my extended family and among friends and acquaintances—who hold those views, and whom I adore. The family is a great institution for many obvious reasons. Here is a less obvious one: It teaches us how to love people with whom we may have major disagreements. It’s easy to love friends—we choose them. It’s not always as easy to love family members with whom one strongly differs on some of the most important issues of life.
One of the worst features of the Left is its assumption that those on the Right are bad people. It is not a view I reciprocate. Indeed, my understanding that so many people with Left-wing views mean well is what enables me to analyze the Left as thoroughly as I do. After all, if everyone you differ with is bad, there is nothing to analyze. You just label them bad and move on.
While on the subject of Leftism, two other issues need to be addressed.
One is the use of the words “liberal” and “Left”—they are used more or less interchangeably. The reason is implicitly explained, but I need to address it explicitly. There was a difference between liberals and the Left for many decades. In the United States, the distinction ended after the Vietnam War. The John F. Kennedy–type liberal—anti-Communist, in favor of using American power to spread liberty, and for lower taxes to stimulate economic growth—essentially died with his assassination on November 22, 1963.
When the New York Times began identifying the Nation, among the most Left-wing journals published in America, as “liberal,” that exemplified the Left-wing takeover of the term “liberal.” Many people who hold Left-wing views still prefer to call themselves “liberal,” but their views are indeed Left-wing. They simply prefer the term “liberal” because they do not wish to see themselves, or have others see them as, Leftists. If the New York Times editorial page is liberal, what is Left? I cannot come up with one major difference between the Nation and the New York Times editorial page.
This in turn leads to the other issue that needs to be clarified. I am sure that many readers, upon encountering a Left-wing position, will say to themselves, or perhaps yell to anyone within hearing distance, “I’m a liberal [or ‘on the Left’] but I don’t hold that view—what’s this guy talking about?”
My response is that in this book I have no interest in identifying Leftist individuals. I am interested in identifying Leftist positions. The fact that any given liberal or Leftist does not hold a certain view does not mean the view is not Leftist. For example, opposition to the death penalty for murder is a Left-wing position despite the fact that some people who call themselves liberal or Left are in favor of the death penalty. It is my belief, in any event, that many Americans who call themselves liberal actually hold many conservative positions. But thanks to the brilliantly successful, nearly century-long campaign to demonize the Right and identify “liberal” with compassion, decency, fairness, and “social justice,” these people would never allow themselves to identify as conservative, let alone to vote Republican.
As for Muslims, I hold out the hope that without dropping belief in the Koran or in Muhammad as Allah’s messenger, Islam can be reformed and become a major world force for liberty, justice, and goodness. There are hundreds of millions of good and decent people in the Muslim world who can use their Muslim identity as a force for good. Why Islam has too rarely been such a force is the focus of the chapters on Islam and Islamism. It would bring me great joy if this book were translated into Arabic and the languages of other major Muslim populations—as I note in some detail, there are already believing Muslims, especially in America, who are working on combining the American value system with their Muslim theological beliefs.
Finally, I return to my opening—my hatred of evil as the ultimate reason for this book.
To put it in a nutshell, evil has been the norm. America has been the aberration.
The list of horrors people have endured at the hands of fellow human beings dates back to the beginning of recorded history. It is likely that about a billion human beings have been killed—not to mention enslaved, beaten, and tortured—by other human beings.
That, plus all the world’s natural suffering, is why the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky felt he could sum up human existence with this line from The Brothers Karamazov: “There is suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering….”
That is why the Buddhist worldview is predicated on the assumption of life as suffering, and why Christianity is founded on the belief that God became human and suffered a torturous death at the hands of human beings.
Even if Dostoyevsky exaggerated somewhat—after all, most of us do not only suffer in life—the problem of unjust human suffering is the central problem of human existence. And most of that suffering has been, and is even more so in modern times, man-made suffering.
Because of all the man-made suffering in history, most societies have sought a solution to this terrible problem. This quest is the genesis of higher religion and of modern political movements: How do we make a better world?
The Buddhist would respond that it is best to simply leave this pain-filled world by following the Buddha and ultimately abandoning our ego-based existence. The Muslim would respond that living a Muslim life, that is, one based on the Koran as understood by Islam since the time of Muhammad—along with universal conversion to Islam—is the answer. The Christian would respond that faith in Jesus Christ and following biblical precepts is the answer for the individual and for all humanity. The traditional Jew would respond that Judaism and its laws are the way for the Jew and that following the basic moral precepts (“The Seven Laws of the Children of Noah”) is the way for all mankind. The secular humanist, that is, a follower of the Enlightenment, would argue that reason and science provide the answer. Modern-day men and women on the Left (“progressives,” “social democrats,” “liberals”) equally fervently believe that their values and their models (for example, the Scandinavian countries and Western Europe generally) are the best ones to solve the problem of evil and make a good society.
This book argues that the best—really the only—answer to making a better world is the American value system. Or, to put it another way, if you are disturbed by the amount of unjust suffering most human beings have endured and vast numbers continue to endure, nothing approaches the American value system as humanity’s best hope. It was true when President Abraham Lincoln declared in his message to Congress in 1862 that America is “the last best hope of earth.” And it is true today.