Interview: Virtue Man

It’s not the economy, stupid, says former drug czar William Bennett. It’s values.

William J. Bennett is not the only prominent Republican to set his sights on the White House. But while he has admitted to “thinking about” a presidential bid in 1996, Bennett insists his main concern is working to revamp a society that has lost its hold on cultural and moral values.

In that arena, Bennett finds plenty to keep him busy. With conservative stalwarts Jack Kemp and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Bennett codirects Empower America, an organization dedicated to promoting conservative principles. He is also a Distinguished Fellow of Cultural Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and a senior editor of National Review.

Bennett’s stints as education secretary and director of drug control policy under the Reagan and Bush administrations no doubt fueled his passion for a national recovery of moral values. In his latest book, The De-Valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children, Bennett further argues his case.

Bennett recently made headlines for spearheading a project he sees as even more significant: The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators. This booklet, says Bennett, provides “a statistical portrait … of the moral, social and behavioral conditions of modern American society.” The 19 cultural indicators show trends in such areas as crime, poverty, drug use, illegitimate births, and even average daily television viewing. The Index shows, says Bennett, that we are suffering from “cultural breakdown.”

A lifelong Catholic, Bennett here discusses what he learned from working on the Index, and what he believes Americans must do to reverse our cultural decline.

What prompted you to put together the Index?

My party likes to say, “It’s the pocketbook issues.” And the Democrats say, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But I believe the most important issues before us as a country are cultural issues. I put together the indicators to get at these other realities.

What did you find?

I found that in America things are not so good. Crime is way up. Child abuse is way up. Illegitimacy is way up. More than 65 percent of black children in this country are born out of wedlock. Family dissolution is up. Perhaps even more important, there are more and more children in this country who never live in a real family. They don’t know what a father is. This is probably the single most important number we looked at. It has a lot to do with generating some of the other numbers.

What we see is social breakdown, which is caused in part by moral breakdown. I identified the moral education of the young as the single most important task we have—in all generations, but emphatically now.

Is there a role for government in shaping cultural and moral values?

I believe in what’s been called “statecraft as soulcraft.” The government has a bully pulpit; the government can be a teacher in a vital national seminar. What it teaches it teaches by example: first through the words and actions of the President and others, and second through how it runs its programs. It teaches through the kinds of behavior it rewards and encourages the kinds of behavior it discourages.

Do politically and theologically conservative Christians, who are often labeled the Religious Right, have an important role to play in stemming this cultural decline?

I think they may have the most important role. They have kept in shape while the rest were losing their heads.

There’s a wonderful story about a Vermont farmer who’s out for a car ride with his wife; she’s sitting on the passenger side of the front seat. She says, “You know, Jed, when we were first married, you’d drive with one hand on the wheel and one arm around me. What’s happened?” And he looks up and says, “I ain’t moved.” A lot of conservative Christians haven’t moved; it’s the rest of us who moved. Do a portrait of the typical conservative Christian in America and this is what most Americans were like 30 to 40 years ago.

Is the Republican party going to be able to accommodate these people?

They’d better listen to them. Quite apart from what we have to learn from them, there are a lot of them. If the Republican party does not win the votes of conservative Christians, it will not win elections—nationally, in the states, or locally. The Republican party cannot put its fingers in the eyes of these people, both for reasons of prudence and also because they don’t deserve it.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Christian conservatives?

Their values are basically very good. Their priorities are right. They care about their country, their children, the schools—the things I think are right to care about. They’re shooting at the right targets. There are still some who speak in a way that is not inviting, though they are getting much better about that. They make people who disagree with them feel that they are being condemned to eternal damnation. There is, in some, an unwitting moral arrogance, which is something Christians should never be guilty of.

What place do you think religious and moral values should have in public schools?

Values can and should be taught in schools without fear of violating the separation of church and state, without fear of accusations of proselytizing. Such teaching is not only appropriate, it is essential in our time.

This December my Book of Virtues will come out. It’s a 700-page volume designed especially for parents but also for public schools. It’s organized by virtues: honesty, self-discipline, work, and so on. I’m mining the depths of moral literacy in this and other cultures.

I believe the most important responsibility we have now is the moral education of our young. It is a time-honored belief from Thomas Jefferson to the present that schools should be places that teach kids how to read, write, count, think—and develop reliable standards and morals.

Have your leading cultural indicators affected your views about the propriety of schools working to form character?

The process only intensified my belief. I didn’t know the numbers were that bad. I had been on the education, drug control, and humanities beats nine years, and I knew some of the numbers from those jobs, but I didn’t really have a good grasp of the child-abuse numbers. I didn’t have a good grasp of the out-of-wedlock births.

What responses have your indicators generated?

No one has said the numbers were wrong. That’s very important. You can bet when someone with as high a conservative profile as I have gets out there talking about culture and morality, you would have known within 24 hours if the numbers were wrong. Whatever interpretations I or others may want to give, the numbers speak pretty eloquently to our problem.

So the debate will not be over whether the problem is really all that bad, but over the role government can play in creating solutions?

Yes, and I think that’s the next step. But there are a lot of next steps. One of the charts we could have put in the list concerns church attendance. That would have shown a dramatic increase. Now, if everybody’s going to church but society is in its current condition, what’s going on in church? Is church just being overwhelmed by the forces of popular culture? I think there’s a clear message here for the church.

And yes, the indicators suggest that we “reinvent” government, or at least take another look at government. People will defend things as they are by saying, “I concede that government may not help these problems. It may even make things worse. But at least it’s doing something. What’s your alternative?” Take welfare, for example. If I say, “The welfare state is a mess; let’s junk it,” people will say, “But what about the children?” And there has to be an answer to that. So that’s one of the things I’m working on.

What in your upbringing made you an ardent spokesman for values?

In speaking for the nuclear family, I should say I am not a veteran of one. My mom was divorced three or four times, so I speak not as Ricky or David Nelson, Ozzie and Harriet’s sons. My brother and I were raised by women—my mother and grandmother. But these were two very strong women with very clear ideas of right and wrong. They were very sure about the people my brother and I should associate with. People sacrificed to send us to Catholic school, and it meant an extra job for my mother. I had training in Jesuit and Benedictine high schools. And then I got a doctorate in philosophy, with an emphasis on ethics.

What ideas or issues or influences caused you, a former liberal Democrat, to become a neoconservative?

Well, I don’t think I changed. I think the Democratic party changed. In 1968 I was in Mississippi, and I said we should judge people as Martin Luther King, Jr., said—by the content of their character not the color of their skin. I was regarded as a liberal. I say that today—and I’m regarded as a conservative. It’s pretty much the same set of beliefs. If you believed what I believed in the early sixties, you would have been at home in the Democratic party. You wouldn’t be any more.

I was very interested in civil rights as an undergraduate. I’m still very interested. But my understanding of civil rights is much closer to what Martin Luther King, Jr., talked about than what Jesse Jackson talks about.

Over the years, some of your views have sparked controversy and criticism. How has that affected you?

Criticism doesn’t matter. It keeps you alert, it keeps you busy. But it doesn’t matter in the long run. As the Bible says, it’s like chaff before the wind.

My commitments, I hope, outrun this particular fight, or the next campaign cycle, or the next presidential election. I have some idea of what I care about and what I know.

I remember when I became secretary of education. I had 45 editorials saying I should leave—written during my first three weeks. I remember reading them at night and becoming depressed. I got up in the morning and checked all the limbs to see if I was still there. Then I went to work.

I have realized over the years that I have my commitments, my convictions, my beliefs, my family, and my friends. They sustain me, and I believe I’m doing something worthwhile.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.