Dr. Benjamin Zycher (a great sci-fi name) included a hit on Bill Bennett in his speculations about the new Supreme Court nominee. The drive-by shot reminded me of a more extended assault on the virtue guru by yours truly. I was and am a fan of Bill Bennett, but I felt a tremendous disappointment in hearing about his gambling habits. It seemed to me the conservative zines were determined to give Bennett a pass, so I tried to preserve the integrity of social conservatives (particularly of the evangelical set) with this piece for American Spectator.
Because it was original and not a whitewash, it was quoted by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and several other web outlets. The best part, though, was that I saw an email one S.T. Karnick sent to the editor of American Spectator praising the short essay. That led to me writing for his magazine American Outlook and ultimately to this weblog, which we hope to someday expand into a more full-featured website with archived essays, short fiction, reviews, etc..
Wow, that's almost as good as the story about how I met my husband -- and has the advantage of not being too ickily sweet for public consumption.
ReplyDeleteRe: Bennett (not that that point of the post was to drag his bulky body around the arena one more time)....sharing a faith with Bennett that does not condemn gambling as per se evil, my main impression was that is was just so disappointingly dumb and boring. How could a man who obviously understands beauty, who loves literature and art and music, spend so much time doing something so dull?? It's not just flirting (or worse) with vice, it's a rejection of the ideal of the examined life well-lived.
And on the coulda, shoulda, woulda line: last night on Brit Hume, Fred Barnes said something I'd never heard before: that before GHWB was dragooned by Sununu and Rudman into nominating Souter, his choice was Edith Jones. Is that true? Would anyone care to go back through the list of cases since then and speculate on how very different the legal landscape would be had Jones sat on the court all those years?
Well, I'm not a fan of gambling, either, even though I, too, share Bennett's religion. But I do know Bill Bennett (he slaughtered me once in a game of Trivial Pursuit, relying on his godlike knowledge of 1950s Doo-Wop music) and I think that it's fair to say that he lives a life that is marked by virtue in many respects. Nobody is perfectly virtuous, of course, and so it's always an easy cheap shot to ridicule someone who talks about virtue. But that it is important to talk about virtue not from the standpoint of what we, as individuals, have actually accomplished but from the standpoint of what we, as humans, are able to achieve if we try, is a point that has been made over and over again, from Plato, to Aristotle, to Augustine, to Bonaventure, to Aquinas....
ReplyDeleteI'm quite sure that's true, Mr. Carson. My article of a couple of years ago was a passionate response to feeling a personal hero let him down. The example of going gambling after a speech to a pro-family group was a true one. A friend had to arrange for Bennett to speak earlier one evening to accommodate a quick getaway to Vegas.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not terrible and Bennett never claimed to be a saint, but it was a sad story that left many disappointed.
I think Burwell makes an interesting and important point about the dangers of hoping for more than we should. I was intrigued by his etymological point, but I would note that "virtue" as Bennett tends to use the term is a philosophical term of art, and is intended as a translation of the Greek word aretê as used, classically, in the expression aretai ethikai from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. In that context, I think, what we see is not a divine standard that is literally unattainable by humans (though I think, to weaken my own argument somewhat, that Aristotle himself mentions "the divine" in relation to the happiest possible life), but a set of socially constructed values governing those traits of human behavior that we find most valuable.
ReplyDeleteHere I think there is lots of room for disagreement over the nature of What Bennett Did. I am very sympathetic to Hunter Baker's complaint (now that I understand it better), but I myself would hesitate to go so far as to say that gambling, in and of itself, constitutes a fall from Holiness, or even a sin against Holiness. It's his money, after all, and as far as I can see there is little difference between throwing money away at a poker game and investing in modern art. But that's just me. Did Bennett endanger his own family? No. Did he perhaps serve as a bad example, as Hunter Baker worries? Quite possibly, and in that sense he would fail to be the Practially Wise Person whom Aristotle says we ought to follow. But I don't think it entails any major sins.
Perhaps we were the sinners, Burwell, in hoping for more than we should? (Sorry about calling you "Burwell", by the way--it sounds rather brusque just like that, but I don't know what else to call you--I'm completely new to this blog.)
There are a couple of sources of the disappointment. In the evangelical community we had Larry Burkett who talked a lot about how one should use his/her money. He was very much against gambling because it was a zero-sum situation. For you to win, someone else has to lose. That's very different from business, where two people could deal with each other and have no losers. There are probably holes in the argument, but it made an impression on me.
ReplyDeleteSecond, whenever I have had money, I've thought a lot about how I would spend it, what I would give away, and to whom I would give it. Gambling very large amounts of money doesn't fit into that sense of ethics or Christian mission very well. I'd feel the same way if he lived very extravagantly.