Memory, Justice and Moral Cleansing

SPRING 2017 | VOL.27 | N0.2

ACTON INSTITUTE'S INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION, ECONOMICS AND CULTURE

Memory, justice and moral cleansing

What are Freedom and the When our success transatlantic values? nation-state threatens our success EDITOR'S NOTE

Sarah Stanley MANAGING EDITOR

This spring issue of Religion & Liberty is, among other things, a reflection on the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the horrors committed by Communist regimes. For the cover story, Religion & Liberty executive editor, John Couretas, interviews Mihail Neamţu, a leading conservative in Romania. They discuss the Russian Revolution and current protests against corruption going on in Romania. A similar topic appears in Rev. Anthony Perkins’ review of the 2017 film Bitter Harvest. This love story is set in the Ukraine during the Holodomor, a deadly famine imposed on Ukraine by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet regime in the 1930s. Perkins addresses the signifi- cance of the Holodomor in his critique of the new movie. Romanian Orthodox hermit INTERVIEW Nicolae Steinhardt was another victim of a 07 Memory, justice and moral cleansing Communist regime. During imprisonment Coming to grips with the Russian Revolution and its legacy in a Romanian gulag, he found faith and Interview with Romanian public intellectual Mihail Neamţu even happiness. A rare excerpt in English from his “Diary of Happiness” appears in this issue. You’ve probably noticed this issue of Religion & Liberty looks very different from previous ones. As part of a wider look at international issues, this magazine has been updated and expanded to include new sections focusing on the unique challenges facing Canada, Europe and the Unit- ed States. A senior editor at Acton, Rev. Ben Johnson, explains this new project in “What are transatlantic values?” TRANSATLANTIC ESSAY ESSAY Another feature discusses the surge of populism and why global elites are getting 05 Freedom and the nation state 11 The middle class in an age the boot. Robert F. Gorman, author of Ac- Crisis of Liberty in the West Conference of inequality ton’s latest monograph What’s Wrong with Sir Roger Scruton Jordan J. Ballor Global Governance?, sits down with John Couretas to expand on the themes of his 02 Acton Briefs latest work. For the first “In the Liberal Tradition” of 03 What are this newly redesigned publication, we learn transatlantic values? about the life and work of Lucretia Mott. 10 Faith as a bulwark This fearless Quaker fought for the most against inhumanity vulnerable of her time and was a champion 12 for both women’s suffrage and the rights of It’s time to bury the ‘executioner’ Lenin for good America’s newly freed slaves. Plenty of other important topics are also 16 Lucretia Mott (1793–1880) scattered throughout the issue: the danger INTERVIEW 17 Observing the of success, how poverty follows children well American experiment into adulthood, a brief on the accomplish- 13 Populists push back on ments of Elinor Ostrom and much, much global elites and expert rulers 20 When our success threatens more. Enjoy the new Religion & Liberty! Interview with Robert F. Gorman our success

01 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG Ten good reasons for They worship God or gods on The long shadow of The Pope, the professor optimism their own. They also disagree EU law and the poor and fight about territory and Oliver Riley R&L TRANSATLANTIC BLOG Rev. Ben Johnson Jordan J. Ballor religion on their own. Under- R&L TRANSATLANTIC BLOG JOURNAL OF MARKETS & MORALITY Leading economist Johan Nor- lying all of human life and its berg’s latest book, Progress, many activities is a concern The think tank Open Europe The preferential concern for was a joy to read. He draws for justice and claims about calculated that EU regulations the poor, in Scripture as in the attention to the fact that pes- the best way of life. siphon £13 billion ($16.2 bil- writings of Abraham Kuyper simism across the globe is Live and let live is the lib- lion) out of the U.K.’s economy and Pope Leo XIII, should widespread—from the chair- eral/libertarian answer to the a year. The Telegraph reports not be understood as pitting man of the joint chiefs of staff question of how we ought to that the EU’s Common Agricul- rich against poor in a kind of testifying before Congress that organize politically, but it does tural Policy (CAP), which places zero-sum game of righteous- “the world is a more dangerous not go nearly far enough. The high tariffs on imported food, ness. Where worldly and ma- place than it has ever been” to greatest thinkers, from Plato “reportedly costs £10 billion terialistic philosophies preach Pope Francis claiming that and Aristotle to Augustine and in direct costs and by inflating conflict between classes and globalization has condemned Thomas Aquinas to Hobbes food prices” annually. These groups, the gospel proclaims many people to starve. Then and Locke to Rousseau and analyses do not include anoth- reconciliation. As Leo puts it: he gives us 10 good reasons Nietzsche and all who have er estimated 14.3 percent of “The great mistake made in in 10 good chapters why this come after them, hold politics all acts passed by the U.K.’s regard to the matter now un- sentiment is wrong. to be fundamentally more im- Parliament from 1980 to der consideration is to take up Norberg zooms you through portant than economics be- 2009, which “incorporated a with the notion that class is food, sanitation, life expectan- cause it conditions how we degree of EU influence.” naturally hostile to class, and cy, poverty, violence, the envi- think about justice. By freeing itself of EU reg- that the wealthy and the work- ronment, literacy, freedom and Nationalism is an import- ulation, the U.K. can manifest ing men are intended by na- then equality before rounding ant issue today because we another kind of European eco- ture to live in mutual conflict.” things up with a chapter titled realize that the vast amounts nomic culture: one that frees It is not, moreover, as if “the next generation,” in which of wealth provided by econom- the wealth-creating powers of the poor are simply righteous he asserts that “the future is ic globalization is insufficient the private sector by valuing while the rich are simply evil. in our hands.” Along the way, in at least two ways: It does innovation, growth, dynamism, The history and legacy of rev- you are bombarded with facts not necessarily result in better initiative, entrepreneurship, olutions teach us that. As and figures and pleasantly human beings or in the com- subsidiarity, choice and the Kuyper observes, the corrup- surprised by the occasional mon good, however we think traditional charitable role of tion of the government came graph, so that by the end you of our community (ethnic, reli- intermediary institutions. This about “not because the stron- scratch your head and ques- gious, political or global). The contrasts sharply with Brus- ger man was more evil in his tion just how on earth it could first concern is connected to sels’ economic culture: one heart than the weaker man.” be possible that so many de- virtue in general, the second that empowers global gover- Rather, “no sooner did a mem- spair so much. to justice in particular. We nance institutions by valuing ber of the lower class rise to Occasionally the book are being forced to reconsider regulation, preservation of the the top than he in turn took reads a little staccato, and at some old questions. economic status quo, stability, part just as harshly—if not times the speed at which the The modern world has pro- bureaucracy pliable to the lob- more harshly—in the wicked facts are hurtled your way can vided us with many benefits, bying of labor unions and spe- oppression of members of his feel somewhat overwhelming. including the political form of cial interest constituencies, former class.” Even a reversal But overall it is hard to come the nation-state. Compared public-private “partnerships,” of fortunes between entire away from the book feeling to alternatives such as the centralization and the social classes would not solve the anything other than optimistic. city-state or the empire, the assistance (welfare) state. problem, for today’s victims nation has the advantage of Why would London wish to often become tomorrow’s op- providing people with both the maintain this edifice after de- pressors, and the cycle of vio- Nationalism is here freedom of self-determination claring independence? Should lence continues. to stay and the solidarity of belong- it do otherwise, the govern- Together Leo and Kuyper ing to something larger than ment warns, “UK’s statute give us insight into the only Kishore Jayabalan ACTON ROME one’s own group or identity. At book would contain significant way out of this sinful para- To a very basic degree, eco- its best, nationalism leads to gaps once we left the EU.” digm: the identification of the nomics takes care of itself; to cosmopolitanism. That is precisely what many dignity of the human person in survive, people produce and As defenders of freedom, British experts hope for. “Brex- eternal and spiritual perspec- consume on their own without we need to take these challeng- it gives us the opportunity: all tive, as created in God’s im- being told to do so. But peo- es more seriously not only as regulations, but not directives, age, fallen into sin, called to ple also come together to form individuals but also together. will fall away automatically,” redemption and intended for communities on their own. writes Tim Ambler at the Adam glorification. Smith Institute’s blog.

02 TRANSATLANTIC ESSAY What are transatlantic values?

What values do the United States, Europe and Canada share?

Rev. Ben Johnson

he notion that the United States and the European Union share an unbreakable set of well-defined values has under- T gone a resurgence since America’s presidential election. Immediately after the election, outgoing French socialist president François Hollande urged then President-elect Trump to “respect” such principles as “democracy, freedoms and the respect of every individual.” At their last joint press conference as world leaders late last November, President Barack Obama and German Chancellor An- gela Merkel pressed national leaders—in President Obama’s words—“not to take for granted the importance of the transatlantic alliance.” Invoking more than transient national interests, they grounded their support for that longstanding partnership on their conception of the bedrock principles which, in their view, unite North America and the EU. In a joint New York Times op-ed published the same day, Obama and Merkel called on transatlantic nations to “seize the opportunity to shape globalization based on our values and our ideas.” Among “the values we share,” the pair cited themes such as “our commitment to democracy, our commitment to the rule or law, [and] our commitment to the dignity of all people in our own countries and around the world.” Their concerns were conventional enough to verge on being plat- itudinous. However, applying their definition of transatlantic values Photo: Angela Merkel, David Cameron, Barack Obama and Naoto Kan 2010 by Pete Souza (Flickr) to more specific policy issues, Chancellor Merkel called for governments on both sides of the Atlantic to take additional measures aimed at “climate protection,” as well as expanded international “development cooperation.” For his part, President Obama proposed additional public “investment” in alternative energy. The elements of this share a few common factors. They grant additional powers to the government to regulate, subsidize or re- distribute the profits of new sectors of national and international economic activity. This clashes with the West’s ethical heritage, which has led generations to recognize that, due to fallen human nature, society must place greater restrictions and more robust checks and balances on the state and those who aspire to exercise its powers. Furthermore, the principles enunciated by modern EU leaders turn first to the state rather than to private philanthropy or civil society for their fulfillment. This may stem from their thoroughly secular nature, devoid of any reference to a transcendent power or their provenance in an identifiable and articulated moral code. Both the press conference and the subsequent missives from

03 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG international leaders were notable for the Omitting these concerns undeniably im- values they did not enumerate, such as poverishes the intellectual and political discussion. Worse, it coarsens the political  religious liberty; climate. When the leaders of the Fifth European  economic dynamism that allows Catholic-Orthodox Forum gathered in Paris people to rise to the full extent of in January, they focused their discussions their potential; of public moral crises not on income inequality or alternative energy but on the  circumscribing the power and reach three areas they deem most threatened of governments, especially at the from Warsaw to Lisbon: “fundamentalist supranational level; terrorism, and the value of human person, and religious freedom.” They vowed “to  upholding Judeo-Christian values; stand together in order to face” the “un- and precedented challenges and threats” they encounter in the region once known simply  encouraging strong churches, social as Christendom by “communicating and organizations and civil society promoting Christian values and principles institutions to meet national needs in the sphere of public life, including the organically, from the bottom up. international level.” For 27 years, the Acton Institute has Nor did they mention the shared challeng- promoted these ecumenical principles. es facing the United States, Canada and Beginning with this issue of Religion & Lib- the EU, such as erty, we will join our efforts more conspicu- ously with the beleaguered remnant of the  lumbering welfare state economies like-minded faithful in Europe. We seek to that sap the vitality of their most articulate the values politicians leave out creative elements; of public discourse and to highlight the gaps between politically toxic rhetoric and  demographic implosion, which historically verified principles of freedom threatens future productivity and and virtue. state pensions’ solvency; In January, the Acton Institute launched the website Religion & Liberty Transatlantic  a crisis of faith, undermining both (http://acton.org/publication/transatlan- our historically shared values and tic) to address these issues as they relate the concept of objective truth itself; to the transatlantic arena. The website now features news, commentary and anal-  mounting indebtedness and rising ysis from the United States, Canada and debt-to-GDP ratios that slow current the EU. This new addition is one of several economic growth and imperil future changes to the familiar publication, which generations’ opportunities; Religion & Liberty has received a sophisticated redesign.  economic Some believe policies that this battle has al- discourage firms “We seek to ready been fought to hire full-time and lost, that the workers; articulate the faith has already died in the West and  large and grow- values politicians the EU has already ing segments leave out of public been fundamental- of society that ly transformed into share none of discourse.” a secularist super- the historic val- state. But if the ues treasured by the West, whether Scriptures proclaim any one message, it’s religious or secular; and that death precedes resurrection.

 the strife between local self-determi- Rev. Ben Johnson is a senior editor at the nation and overreaching national or Acton Institute. supranational governments.

04 TRANSATLANTIC ESSAY something more than paper documents. It is something that exists only so long as we protect it, and the demand that we do so underlay the surprising result of the recent Freedom and the referendum—surprising because the result expressed the feelings of people who have been most affected by the culture of repu- nation state diation and the political correctness of our governing elite. The Following essay is excerpted from a lecture given on December 1, 2016, at the We should recognize that freedom is Crisis of Liberty in the West Conference. nothing if we cannot protect it from pred- ators. Protection comes about only in Sir Roger Scruton conditions of trust, in which institutions command obedience and define the public standards of conduct and responsibility t is characteristic of our times to regard freedom as an attribute of individuals. To which we are to honor and which can be campaign for my freedom, to choose my way of life, my rights to proceed in this or that called on against the threats. I way through life without interference and to concede the social dimension of freedom We are heirs to a society governed by only by default—by recognizing that whatever freedoms I claim I must also grant. In other law, in which the people themselves make words, to admit that freedom can be limited only for the sake of freedom and that all our and adjust the law through their represen- claims to it are equal. tatives. Ours is a secular law that we can Traditionally, it was not so. Freedom was regarded primarily as an attribute of the body change as circumstances change and that politic as a whole. We Britons prided ourselves on living in a “free country” and regarded we obey because it expresses the commit- our freedom as a quality of the institutions under which we lived and the space in which ment we all share to the first person plural those institutions operated. This freedom was something we encountered—like a re- freshing breeze—when we returned from abroad and crossed the border, sensing that we were now in safe hands. Freedom was seen as an inheritance, a feature of a way of life, not to be understood in terms of the multiplicity of options, still less in a list of civil rights. It was a shared way of being, founded in mutual trust and the product of institutions that were created not in a day but passed on from generation to generation as things to be trusted. The free citizen was marked by a proud independence, a respect for others and a sense of responsibility for their common way of life and the choices it protected. Fair-mindedness, ac- ceptance of eccentricity and a reluctance to take offense, combined with an aversion for abuse and slander, were attributes of free citizens and belonged to them by virtue of public institutions in which they placed their trust and which they were tu- tored to defend both in thought and deed Photo: Sir Roger Scruton lecturing at Acton Institute event. against those who would destroy them. Such citizens fought for the freedom of their country and for their own freedom as part of it. of our national identity. Our law is adjusted It seems to me that the free individual and the free country belong together and that and amended in the interests of reconcili- the one will not survive without the other. However, the emphasis on rights, the neglect of ation and peace within the historical com- the duties that bind individuals to each other and to the political order, and the growing munity over which it stands in judgment. grievance industry fostered by the welfare state are weakening the obedience on which This law-governed society is made pos- freedom ultimately depends. sible because we know who we are and The pursuit of individual freedom, detached from inherited obedience, leads to a new define our identity by our country, the place denial of freedom. where our man-made law prevails, the sov- Because we share a national identity that subsumes institutions, customs and laws, we ereign territory in which we have built the can share—without any other cost than that of belonging—that our individual freedoms are free form of life we share.

05 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG This sovereign territory is our home, and it is in terms of it that our public duties are defined. We may have religious and family BRIEF duties too, but they are private duties, not incumbent on the citizenry as a whole. Our public duties are defined by the secular law and by the customs and institutions that WHO WAS have grown alongside it. It is in that way that we should define the “first person plural,” the “we” of the ELINOR OSTROM? modern nation state. And in my view, this New book details work of only female economics Nobel laureate. “we” is much preferred to the “we” of the ruling oligarchy or the “we” of religion. Yet Sarah Stanley those rival “we” identifications are at this very moment eyeing our assets with a view to imposing themselves, and it is time for us to wake up to what we have—to the blessing of a national identity and a shared homeland, within whose borders we are freely governed. It has become politically incorrect to affirm one’s loyalty in such terms. The EU insists that to think in this way is to commit the sins of racism and xenophobia. Let it be said that the regime of censorship and intimidation under which we now live is so powerful that no voter will confess to national feelings when they have been told that to do so is proof of racism or xenophobia. That is why the opinion polls In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first (and so far, only) woman to receive a were so wrong, both regarding Brexit and Nobel for economics. She and Oliver E. Williamson shared the Sveriges Riksbank the American election. National loyalty has Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel—Ostrom for “her analy- been branded as a sin. sis of economic governance, especially the commons” and Williamson for “his It seems to me that the national iden- analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.” When tity that I, as an Englishman, have inher- Ostrom received the award, Acton’s Samuel Gregg wrote about Ostrom’s and ited—the identity of a nation joined in a Williamson’s research. “Ostrom and Williamson have shown how it is possible union of like-minded nations in a single, for firms and other communities to facilitate economic efficiency from ‘within,’” sovereign territory—is far more robust than he said. Their work sought to explain “the development of rules within groups its detractors assume, and that it has, like and communities that allow for conflict resolution and efficiency gains in ways the American identity, a remarkable capac- that are often far more sophisticated than externally imposed state regulation.” ity to absorb incomers and to integrate Ostrom’s research challenged the conventional wisdom of the time by showing them by a process of mutual adaptation. that local goods can be successfully managed by local players. But we can adapt to the effects of inward It had been assumed that any resources collectively used would be depleted migration only if migration is controlled and and destroyed. Ostrom conducted several studies on how small communities only if we are allowed to affirm our identity manage shared resources. “She showed that when natural resources are jointly in the face of it so as to renew our obedi- used by their users,” explains the prize committee, “rules are established for ence to the institutions and customs that how these are to be cared for and used in a way that is both economically and define us. ecologically sustainable.” In other words, the global processes Elinor and her husband, Vicent Ostrom, set up the Bloomington Workshop in that challenge us now are reasons to af- Political Theory and Policy Analysis, which is now a global network of scholars firm national sovereignty and not to repu- and economists. diate it. For national sovereignty defines A new biography, Elinor Ostrom: An Intellectual Biography, by Vlad Tarko (Row- what we are. man & Littlefield 2017) details Ostrom’s work. It summarizes her contributions to the field of economics and features several figures, photos and tables. George Sir Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher Mason professor Peter J. Boettke argues that the new book “is a must-read not who has published more than 40 books. He is only for those who want to learn about Elinor Ostrom and her contributions but a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of for all students of political economy.” the Royal Society of Literature.

06 When it comes to writing the obituary INTERVIEW of a brutal dictator, to quote here President Trump, Western academics still show an

amazing degree of moral relativism. From Photo: "Da zdravstvuet mirovoi Oktiabr'!" General Research Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations an ideological perspective, Castro was the Memory, justice and grandchild of Lenin. Yet Prime Minister Trudeau and Barack Obama failed, among moral cleansing others, to see this form of continuity. How- ever, I fear that Russia today is doing al- Coming to grips with the Russian Revolution and its legacy. most nothing to commemorate the victims of the Bolshevik Revolution. Quite the contrary: freedom fighters are being bullied and arrested in Moscow as we talk. This is omanian public intellectual Mihail Neamţu has written eight books on politics, why I salute the Acton Institute’s efforts to religion and culture in defense of the cultural contributions of Christianity and the grasp our experience of Communism and political values of classical liberalism. He has become a leading conservative in the way it has impacted our social fabric Romanian policy circles and blogs about European issues at the Library of Liberty and Romania’s way of life. Rand Law site. Neamțu, who has a doctorate in theology from King’s College, London, has pur- R&L: Where is the justice for the tens of sued postdoctoral studies at New Europe College, Bucharest; Woodrow Wilson International million who died under Communist oppres- Center for Scholars, Washington; and the Russell Kirk Center in Michigan. Neamţu, who was in sion, many of them already forgotten? Washington recently, was interviewed by Religion & Liberty's executive editor, John Couretas. N: Since 1989, some countries, such Religion & Liberty: This year we are marking 100 years since the Russian Revolution. as Poland and the Czech Republic, have Eastern Europeans still live with the effects, the legacy of that cataclysmic event. What are accepted the notion of lustration or moral your thoughts? cleansing, which removed from the public Neamţu: The Bolshevik Revolution and its 100th anniversary are of relevance for West- square former Communist apparatchiks. erners and Eastern Europeans alike. We still lack in the West a good understanding of the Other countries, such as Romania, have ideological roots of Communism, which lasted for at least a century in Europe, Asia and, to postponed the punishment of the evil per- some extent, Latin America. Just look at the reactions of many politicians and intellectuals petrators, making the act of memory a after the death of Fidel Castro. form of immanent justice. We can always

07 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG tell the stories of those who suffered in the N: Our moral instincts are shaped by other such periodicals in Eastern Europe, gulag. Perhaps we should do it more often our close readings of exemplary lives. you would find out that every day there was and more eloquently. Dropping names and Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan another big lie being told to millions of peo- figures isn’t quite enough. Speaking of this were soul mates precisely because, before ple. So fake news is not something recent. danger of equating a human person with they first met, they both had read the sto- It’s rather old in our part of the world. a number, should I also add, perhaps, the ry of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss, We still see politicians telling lies to fact that we just commemorated the vic- as well as fragments from Solzhenitsyn’s their constituencies, former spies or snitch- tims of the 1966 Chinese Cultural Revolu- masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago. They es telling lies to their friends, doctors tell- tion. The consequences of that collective both saw in Communism a great existential ing lies to their patients without a peculiar Maoist brainwashing are still felt to this threat. Why? Because the imaginative pow- reason, university professors telling lies to day in Beijing. ers of their souls were nourished with refer- their students about plagiarized doctoral When we talk about the memory of ences to history, music, art and literature. dissertations and so on. This collective Communism, we talk about a global phe- The diminishing of political leadership form of self-deception is very harmful and nomenon. This is why we should build more in our times may have something to do may lead not just to moral but also financial memorial sites as museums, such as the with our deep ignorance about the brave bankruptcy. one I have recently visited in Vilnius, Lithu- resistance of Czechs, Poles or Hungarians R&L: Where will the healing come ania. We should also learn from Germany from the 1950s to the 1980s. How many in from? Must everyone wait for the passing how to bring about this painful yet liberating the West have heard of the very impressive of generations? recognition of the horrors of a totalitarian figure of a Romanian intellectual named N: Only truth can set us free. Nobody regime. Nicolae Steinhardt? He was an expert on can deny the progress made by South R&L: Are millennials ready to listen? constitutional law and a highly skilled lit- Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation N: It depends on the media platform erary critic who, in the wake of the 1956 Commission led by Archbishop Desmond where we choose to communicate our Budapest revolts, was sentenced to pris- Tutu. Our own churches in Eastern Europe message. It is true that we live in a day on. There his spiritual hunger led him to could perhaps begin to confront the past and age where the greatest threat to this prayer. Fasting, of course, was already on by opening the archives and getting in- understanding of our past is, simply put, the concentration camp menu. While still volved in the work of memory that we have ignorance. By constantly living in the pres- in a labor camp, Steinhardt embraced the already talked about. New York City has ent tense, like T. S. Eliot’s “insects of the Christian faith and emerged as a luminous built an impressive memorial for the vic- hour,” we may find ourselves always at the figure among his former political inmates. tims of the 9/11 terrorist attack. No visitor surface of things. We tend to forget that I personally grew up with such powerful to Ground Zero can miss the therapeutic past is prologue. The world of ephemeral stories, which, believe aspects of such a me- tweets, Snapchats, Facebook posts and me, could easily be the morial site. Unless we Instagram pictures is remarkably colorful. subject of a Hollywood honor our heroes, who Perhaps we should engage our youth there, blockbuster. Why not? “Life’s most stood up for freedom, in social media. However, there’s no way R&L: When you sur- the ghosts of the past we can preserve the treasures of the past vey the current political persistent and will strike us back. by having only a shallow understanding of and cultural scene in urgent question Is that what we were those who fought for our freedoms. Our Eastern Europe, in what seeing in Romanian cities schools and our churches should there- ways do you see cultures is, what are this past winter? fore consider more the art of storytelling. still struggling with the you doing for Throughout the whole It is important to know that more than 100 legacy of Communism? month of February 2017, million people have been killed since the In 1980, according to others?” nearly a million people Bolshevik Revolution started. But our nar- one estimate, 1.5 bil- took to the streets of Bu- ratives should include tales about individu- lion people were living under Communist charest and other cities to protest against als who had a name, who had a house, who regimes out of a global population of 4.4 corruption and the empire of lies told by had dreams, friends and hobbies, which all billion. politicians who hate justice and the rule of came under attack. Once we begin to ask N: Of course there is a lasting legacy. law. Remember what Solzhenitsyn told Rus- fundamental questions, such as "Why did The biblical image of the forty years of wan- sians back in the 1970s: “Live not by lies!” they suffer?" and "Why did they die?" we dering in the desert comes to my mind. I’m hopeful now because we live an age may see a healthier society. The story of the Israelites from slavery to of digital transparency. Just turn on Google R&L: In the United States, both the his- freedom captures the struggle of my own Maps and you will see how filthy rich are torical narrative and the fictional narrative in nation. One striking aspect of this legacy those politicians who have stolen billions film and print about Communism is meager. of Communism is the rampant presence of of dollars from their own people. I remain The terrible destruction wrought by the dis- corruption in my society at all levels. Com- hopeful because the U.S. is our strategic ciples of Marx, Engels and Lenin isn’t taught munism was built on murder, and it was ally and because there’s a new generation in American schools, so our young people carried out through lies piled upon lies. Ac- who wants to see more accountability and are largely ignorant of that history. Why isn’t tually, we could say the greatest factory of transparency. Corruption kills. Corruption Solzhenitsyn read in our schools? What fake news in history was the Bolshevik Rev- steals our future and buries our dreams. about The Black Book of Communism? olution. If you were a reader of Pravda and This civic awakening that I have personally

08 witnessed during many hours of protests in it to the American people, who trusted the the public square makes me more optimistic. instincts of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and R&L: Have the Romanian churches then in 1984. This memory keeps us close been providing witness at the cultural level? and gives us a new direction. N: If you believe in Christ, you know how blessed are those who hunger for righteousness’ sake. During the protests, the Romanian Orthodox Church issued a The Marxist's love for humanity statement in support of the anti-corruption Prime Minister Alexi Tsipras (known as the fight, suggesting that “robbery and theft de- Greek “Che Guevara”) said that “the com- grade society morally and materially.” How- munist regime . . . at least had humanity ever, the protests mustered people from at the center of their thinking.” Young and all walks of life. People demanded justice radical politicians such as he do not feel because, for many decades, they saw their the need to explain the criminal deeds of lives diminished by what are aptly known the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Instead as “the extractive elites.” of looking at the horrors of the gulag, the Several times, Pope Francis has also leaders of Syriza and Podemos offer their stated that institutionalized corruption is a audience the same toxic and yet mesmer- big threat to our ways of life. It may sound izing incantations that make people forget trite, but it is just commonsensical. We may about the Ukrainian Holodomor or about recognize, after all, that common sense is the Stalinist labor camps of Perm, Volga our common denominator. Most autocratic Canal, and Pitești. regimes defy reason and turn free people When a freely elected leader of a Euro- into objects of exploitation, consumption pean nation can say that “humanity” was and mockery. This is why Christian leaders “at the center” of the communist experi- have to get involved and restore the dignity ment, we must pause and ask ourselves: of the individual. How can Europe regain the vast amount of R&L: What you’re talking about is really moral clarity it has lost since the 1989– those common values that exist between 1991 period? Will perhaps the foe of the Europe and North America and still bind us former evil empire make a Reaganite come- together in a way that perhaps we are not back to help Europe find its way? Might we linked by other regions. We still have some- believe that a future president of the United thing to talk about. States will call out the new Jacobins? May N: And something to build. I do not talk we hope that future leaders of democratic here merely about future policies, though parties will stop indulging in a shameless NATO needs to rethink its mission and vi- nostalgia for Marx and Lenin? sion by recognizing the threat of a global It is a matter of historical record that, jihad. We should build a culture that un- fully aware of the horrors of Communism. like the victims of the Shoah, the prisoners derstands why individual freedom is our One of Donald Trump’s favorite books is of communism underwent unimaginable greatest gift in life. an excellent biography of Chairman Mao. physical degradation and psychological tor- Here I am, talking about the legacy of Younger politicians, such as Ted Cruz and ture. Who will educate the Prime Minister of Communism, nearly thirty years after the Marco Rubio, understand why Eastern Eu- Greece and tell him of Alexander Solzhenit- 1989 revolution in Romania. Could this ropean countries are far more pro-Ameri- syn’s long-lasting witness? Who will enlight- conversation have happened in the ab- can than France, Spain and Germany. We en Pablo Iglesias Turrión, secretary-general Photo: Protest against corruption Bucharest 2017 by Mihai Petre (Wikimedia) sence of a great leader, such as Ronald understand our transatlantic values to be of Spain’s leftist Podemos party, about the Reagan? I grew up listening to Voice of rooted in this existential quest for political black mass which, in the name of human- America in a basement, together with my freedom, not in whims and social experi- ity, the KGB proxies organized at Pitești grandparents. In a sense, I feel like I’m ments. Countries such as Poland, Roma- Prison during the late 1950s? Students the grandchild of Ronald Reagan. I belong nia and the Baltic States are good allies of theology living under communism were to a generation in Eastern Europe that for the United States not just from a mil- forced to denounce God, to mock Christ, benefitted immensely from the personal itary perspective. We value deeply what and to blaspheme the name of the Virgin courage of Pope John Paul II and from America did for us, before and after 1989. Mary under the burden of extreme beat- the prophetic insight of Ronald Reagan, Younger Americans should hear more of- ings and despicable sufferings. Such was who knew that the Berlin Wall could be ten about Radio Free Europe, which was the “love” for “humanity” that millions of demolished, who knew Communism could funded by the CIA, and its contribution people witnessed during the 20th century. be collapsing in our lifetime. So I’m very to our civic awaking in December 1989. grateful. On this historic foundation we Since then, our way of life has dramatically Mihail Neamțu writing at the Library of Law can build a robust future. improved. Our economies are better off. & Liberty, January 2016. There are many U.S. politicians who are We owe it to ourselves, but we also owe

09 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG COLUMN BRIEF

Faith as a bulwark INCOME INEQUALITY AND against inhumanity POVERTY AREN’T THE SAME THING The 20th century was full of horrors, but atrocities are not just part of the past. Joe Carter ACTON POWERBLOG Rev. Robert A. Sirico Income inequality and poverty are sep- arate issues. For many people this is obvious. But there are numer- As we approach the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, a familiar phrase ous Christians who believe income comes to mind: “Man’s inhumanity to man.” I had never explored the provenance of this inequality is an important issue be- line. A quick internet search provided not only the author but also the entirety of Robert cause they assume it is a proxy for Burns’ 1784 poem “Man Was Made to Mourn: A Dirge,” from which the quote resonates. poverty. If this were true, Christians The complete stanza reads: would indeed need to be concerned about income inequality because Many and sharp the num’rous ills concern about poverty is a founda- Inwoven with our frame! tional principle of any Christian view More pointed still we make ourselves, of economics. Regret, remorse, and shame! Fortunately, there is neither a nec- And man, whose heav’n-erected face essary connection nor correlation. The smiles of love adorn, A country could have absolutely no Man’s inhumanity to man poverty at all and have extremely Makes countless thousands mourn! high-income inequality. The reason is because income inequality (measured Burns crafted these lines more than 130 years before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution over- by the Gini coefficient) measures rela- threw what all reasonable scholars would confess was a corrupt aristocracy. Rather than tive, not absolute, income. establish a safe harbor of republican democracy, however, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and But you don’t have to take my word their cohorts completely unmoored the Eastern European countries that became the Union for it. Harry Frankfurt, a philosopher of Soviet Socialist Republics with their brand of totalitarian tyranny. In so doing, they un- who has written a book on inequali- leashed terror on untold millions, numbering far more than Burns’ “countless thousands.” ty, makes the same point: income in- Among the many ignominies inflicted on the unfortunate citizens under the Soviet boot equality and poverty aren’t the same was the Holodomor, the name give to the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s. The exact number of those who perished from starvation may never be tallied, but it’s certain multiple thing. Here’s a quote from a recent millions of innocent people suffered excruciating and needless deaths. Forbes article: Lest readers assume all the inequities and humiliations inflicted on God’s children are It is not inequality itself that is only historical in nature, the current protests against Romanian corruption prove otherwise. to be decried; nor is it equality itself The Romanian Orthodox Church is among the most vocal opponents of government mea- that is to be applauded. We must try sures that would decriminalize official misconduct. to eliminate poverty, not because the Returning to “Man Was Made To Mourn,” Burns captures perfectly the “inalienable poor have less than others but be- rights” granted us by God and defined through natural law: cause being poor is full of hardship and suffering. We must control in- If I’m design’d yon lordling’s slave, equality, not because the rich have By Nature’s law design’d, much more than the poor but because Why was an independent wish of the tendency of inequality to gen- E’er planted in my mind? erate unacceptable discrepancies in If not, why am I subject to social and political influence. Inequal- His cruelty, or scorn? ity is not in itself objectionable—and Or why has man the will and pow’r neither is equality in itself a morally To make his fellow mourn? required ideal.

Today, those who would trample on our freedoms and “make his fellow mourn” still Joe Carter is a senior editor at the exist. At the Acton Institute, we keep the memory alive of those who have heroically cham- Acton Institute. pioned our freedoms—some making the ultimate sacrifice.

10 ESSAY The middle class in an age of inequality The political and social crises of our times are rooted in moral and spiritual malaise.

Jordan J. Ballor

riting in 2013, Moisés Naím, in a complex and complicated world. At the middle. There will always be an aris- formerly executive director the same time that in Naím’s account tocracy and plebs of some sort or another. of the World Bank and cur- power seems to be flowing downward, to What is tenuous and historically contin- rently at the Carnegie En- “micropowers,” as he calls them, a corre- gent is the middle class and the values, dowmentW for International Peace, decried sponding shift is occurring that continues virtues and social order it represents. the increasing impotency of elites to lead to concentrate power upward, in so-called As power flows out from the middle in in a fractured and fractious global pub- “megapowers.” both directions, the basic features of a free lic square. Naím’s concerns were voiced This is the central dynamic of inequal- and virtuous society are lost. The founda- before the most recent surge in populist ity: it isn’t just that the elites have more tions of civil society wither. The sustaining movements around the world, from Brexit and more power while the rest of us are virtues of a flourishing society become to Trump’s victory in America. increasingly powerless. Instead, the per- scarce. In a hyperstylized celebrity culture As Naím put it, “Insurgents, fringe polit- ceived impotence of the majority holds and hyperpartisan political community, ical parties, innovative startups, hackers, within itself a latent power to call forth the quiet practices of fidelity, prudence loosely organized activists, upstart citizen a new leader, a new guard, a new order and thrift are drowned out by bling and media, leaderless young people in city to protect and promote its interests. This #winning. squares, and charismatic individuals who is why populist movements, which rely so The challenges we face today are not seem to have ‘come from nowhere’ are much on majoritarian social support, are primarily political or policy-related. The Photo: Occupy May Day by DavityDave (flickr) (CC BY 2.0) shaking up the old order.” In one sense, so often connected with particular figure- political and social crises of our times are Naím’s observations were prescient and heads and strongmen. The leader and the rooted in moral and spiritual malaise. And foreshadowed the localist, nationalist and masses go together. it is on resources in these realms that we populist strains of the last year or so. But What is really left behind in such a sce- must find our aid. Let us hope that we in another sense, Naím’s analysis is only nario isn’t the dynamic of elites and those still have eyes to see them and ears to half the story. What Naím laments is the they lead. The power is still there, but the hear them. resulting “end of power,” as the title of relationship of leader to those led chang- his book casts it, in which political, ed- es. In times of extreme inequality, power Jordan J. Ballor is a senior research fellow at ucational and bureaucratic elites no lon- flows upward and downward, to the elites the Acton Institute, where he also serves ger are able to exercise the influence and and simultaneously to the lower classes. as executive editor of the Journal of Markets leadership necessary to good governance At the same time, power is evacuated from & Morality. R & L

11 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG ESSAY BRIEF

UNSTABLE It’s time to bury the CHILDHOOD LASTS INTO ADULTHOOD ‘executioner’ Lenin for good Joe Carter An appropriate birthday gift on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Children who grow up in poverty are twice as likely to struggle with finan- Rev. Ben Johnson cial challenges later in life, said Feder- al Reserve chair Janet Yellen recently. A recent survey revealed that more April 22 marks the birthday of the architect of that cataclysmic “proletarian” revolution, than half of young people age 25 to Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to the world as Lenin. 39 who reported that as children they These century-old events continue to dominate the news in modern-day Russia, where worried over things like having enough leaders grapple with how to deal with one tangible legacy of the Marxist past. After his food were currently facing financial death in 1924 at the age of 53, Lenin’s corpse became the centerpiece of a gargantuan, challenges. pyramid-shaped mausoleum in Red Square, where he still lies in artificially preserved “Young adults who regularly or repose. Today, many would like his body, and his legacy, buried. sometimes worried when they were If Christians are eager to bury Lenin, it is less an act of spite than of reciprocation. children about their care, safety, or His decree of October 26, 1917—one of the first acts of the atheistic Bolshevik regime— having enough to eat are also less ordered the seizure of all church and monastic property for redistribution to “the whole likely to be employed, less likely to people.” The great famine of 1921–22 that killed five million people due, in part, to Le- have consistent income month-to- nin’s collectivization of farmland during the time of “war Communism” would give him the month, and less likely to be able to excuse he needed to seize property. pay all their current monthly bills in In a letter to the Politburo on March 19, 1922, Lenin wrote: full, compared with those who never or rarely worried about these concerns With the help of all those starving people who are starting to eat each other, as children,” noted Yellen. who are dying by the millions, and whose bodies litter the roadside all over the The research makes a compelling country, it is now and only now that we can—and therefore must—confiscate all case for the need to think longer term church property with all the ruthless energy we can still muster. This is precisely about how to prepare people for suc- the moment the masses will support us most fervently, and rise up against the … cess in the labor market: religious conspirators. In fact, this research underscores the value of starting young to devel- “Think of how rich some of those monasteries are,” he wrote. “We must have those op basic work habits and skills, like hundreds of millions (or even billions) of rubles” to consolidate Soviet strength. literacy, numeracy, and interpersonal The theft, he urged, should take place with “the sort of brutality that they will remember and organizational skills. These hab- for decades.” its and skills help prepare people for The Bolsheviks seized at least 2.5 billion rubles of gold from Russian churches and work, help them enter the labor mar- spent one million rubles on grain in 1922. The same year, Orthodox Church records ket sooner, meet with more success show that 2,691 priests, 1,962 monks and 3,447 nuns were murdered. Having been over time, and be in a position to de- deprived its property and the people of their means of self-defense, the church entered velop the more specialized skills and a period so typified by persecution that it created an entire class of “New Martyrs” to obtain the academic credentials that commemorate the victims. The number of Orthodox churches plunged from as many are strongly correlated with higher and as 50,000 before the revolution to 500 by 1940, and other faith communities suffered steadier earnings. Indeed, a growing similar decimation. body of economic and education lit- Reappropriating church wealth paralleled the way the Bolsheviks despoiled the Rus- erature has focused on the relative sian people as a whole. “The present system arose,” former Russian politician Yuri efficiency of addressing workforce de- Vlasov would assess in 1989, “entirely on the suppression of the individual, the power- velopment challenges through invest- lessness of each of us, and as a result, our defenselessness.” ments in early childhood development William Faulkner wrote—appropriately enough, in Requiem for a Nun—that “the past and education compared with inter- is never dead. It’s not even past.” But in this case, the detritus of a nation’s past can— ventions later in life. and should—be buried in ignominy, denying Communism the capacity for a resurrection that it so fiercely denied. Joe Carter is a senior editor at the Acton Institute. Rev. Ben Johnson is a senior editor at the Acton Institute. R & L

12 Photo: Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders in Erie, Pa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) Reprinted with permission

INTERVIEW Populists push back on global elites and expert rulers

13 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG oes the Donald Trump supporter nonprofits for the most part. members. That all disappears when fami- in a bright red “Make America G: What I try to do is point out a little bit lies have only one child. Great Again” ball cap have any- of the contradiction. These cultural elites What the Marxists understood and what thing in common with the Ber- that command the high ground on almost more contemporary expressions of post- Dnie Sanders–inspired activist who fervently all national and international organizations, modern thinking understand is that the real hopes for an end to the “political oligarchy” and increasingly even local education, tend battle for control of societies is predomi- in America? Maybe on both the left and to claim that centralization of secular insti- nantly cultural. Paradoxically, the language the right voters have finally had enough of tutions at the global level is responsible for they use, the principles advanced in the global elites in Washington, Brussels and this alleviation. And this is partly symbol- name of human rights and human freedom Davos calling the shots. In his new Acton ized through the claim that the Millennium are actually counterproductive to genuine monograph What’s Wrong with Global Gov- Development Goals and the more recent freedom and the genuine good of peoples ernance?, Robert F. Gorman looks at the sustainable development goals developed and the human dignity of individuals who rise of a globalist ideology that seeks cen- by the U.N. are largely responsible for the are most frequently violated in these global tralization and regulation of “wide reaching improved economic condition of humanity. governance political systems. areas of international action.” Gorman is And as I point out in the book, that’s simply R&L: Your book makes the case that the University Distinguished Professor of Polit- not true. The subsidiary work of private en- Catholic Church is in many places the main ical Science and International Studies at terprises through direct investment, trade hurdle to the global governance project. Texas State University. He spoke recently and private individuals, and remittances of G: The church is supposed to be the with Religion & Liberty's executive editor, income earned by migrants and sent back conveyor of the gospel, a sign of contradic- John Couretas. to their families in the developing world is tion against the novelties of human thought Religion & Liberty: In your new book, really where the dynamic is occurring. that emerge against that gospel. And so by you make a distinction between globaliza- This secular global ethic is an insid- emphasizing the importance of marriage tion and global governance. You say global ious ideology because much of it is ac- and family life and freedom of religion and governance advocates tend to prefer both complished beyond the spotlight, in pri- freedom of conscience and practice of the transnational regulation of markets and vate conferences, in academic gatherings, faith, the church upholds traditional values. the creation of new human rights norms. even in treaty-making oversight bodies for R&L: At the same time, divisions within If I understand you correctly, you’re not human rights treaties. The academic ex- churches, liberal and conservative wings, saying economic globalization is in itself a pert and the NGO, all of whom pretty much see this global ethic in both positive and bad thing. accept the liberal, progressive, secular, negative lights. How well will the traditional Gorman: Yes, I make a distinction. It’s humanist anthropology are working to ad- Christian witness be able to keep itself to- what the scholar Marguerite Peeters would vance this project. gether going forward? call a new global ethic that emphasizes R&L: In your monograph, you say there’s G: I think in some ways that’s what Pope centralization of decision-making, reducing been a complete transvaluation of values, Emeritus Benedict was telling us when he the influence of national governance in that how things are sort of turned on their head. said the church might be a smaller but process and, by definition, other more local Could you explain how you connect this global more faithful remnant. The Catholic Church forms of government. We’re talking about governance ideology with Marxist thought? is not going to go away, but its capacity to the subsidiary bodies that do most of the G: It’s actually utilitarian thinking, the influence the world depends on our bish- heavy lifting in all the questions dealing reduction of the human person to simply ops, specifically, those committed to the with human dignity propagation of the and economic life gospel itself. and promotion of R&L: What about work and economic “This secular global ethic is an insidious the way global elites development. These are redefining the are at the core of ideology because much of it is accomplished very definition of hu- what has actually man dignity? Do you been the most stag- beyond the spotlight, in private conferences, see that as part and geringly positive ex- in academic gatherings, even in treaty-making parcel of this whole pansion of wealth in global governance the world, with eco- oversight bodies for human rights.” project? nomic globalization, G: They reduce the trade migration patterns, communica- a material object rather than a personal the dignity of the human person to the pur- tion and that sort of thing. subject. In practice, Marxists have made it suit of pleasure and predominantly sexual R&L: This global economic transforma- their business to directly attack both the pleasure. And what’s ironic about this is that tion has occurred in parallel with the rise church and family life in an effort to devel- there’s a tendency on the part of advocates of a new global ethic, as you call it, that op direct relationships with individuals. So of this new global ethic to attack the church aims to establish a purely secular political it’s not surprising to look at China and see as preoccupied with sex and a guilty under- and social order. The heavy lifting for this that its one-child policy is, in a sense, a way standing of sex. But in fact, these global project takes place quietly in the work of to exterminate the Confucian ethic, which governance elites are preoccupied with it. NGOs, UN committees and innumerable involved all those duties to extended family They define freedom as radical autonomy.

14 R&L: There is no sense that human dignity list surges in the United States and in Eu- is connected with anything transcendant. rope, on both the left and the right. Donald G: It’s a totally warped human anthro- Trump and Bernie Sanders. Do you see a pology that denies the natural basis of growing sentiment among voters that time masculinity and femininity of the role of the is up for the rule of elites and their experts? family as the basic unit of society, without G: I do think so. These are all mani- which we don’t even have the propagation festations in a world where there is great- of the human species. But again, part of er literacy, where people have freer ac- this new global elite is that the human be- cess to information sources of their own ing is, in a sense, the enemy of the ecology, choosing on the internet. We now have a the enemy of the environment, and there- discussion about some of the negative fore that’s why they advance the idea of aspects of globalization that people are contraception and abortion and steriliza- more broadly aware of. And you look at tion and reduction of human fertility as the coincidence, then, between what was one of the greatest goods of this global happening in Britain on Brexit and the governance movement. surge of uncontrolled refugee migration R&L: The human person as the culprit into Europe, which itself stimulated, per- for an exhausted Earth. haps, popular movements against this G: Right. It’s the idea that human be- idea that Brussels was imposing rules ings and population growth are the number and regulations on the whole of Europe in one enemy to sustainable development a way that was adversely affecting the se- and to the health of planet earth. And of curity and well-being of populations in EU course, this goes back a ways too, to those countries. People are only going to put up limits to growth concepts that emerged in with that for so long before they just say, the 1960s with Paul Ehrlich and his Popu- “Ok, we’ve got to put some new people in lation Bomb thesis. Unfortunately, Ehrlich charge here to clean this up.” seems to have some influence even to this R&L: And the Sanders phenomenon day in Catholic circles. rode the same antiestablishment, antiex- Photos: Left: Britain Brexit Decision Graphic by naulicreative (shutterstock). Right: Mott Lucretia Painting 1841 by Joseph Kyle (Smithonian National Portrait Gallery) R&L: Is it a coincidence that this de- pert type of wave? mographic decline is occurring alongside a G: Of course, but we’re dealing with it rapid secularization? very much on the left. On the left and the G: There’s a cultural dimension of it right are two different perceptions about and a political dimension of it. The po- who to blame. But with Sanders sup- litical dimension is to get to the estab- porters, you saw some of the same un- lishment of global policies by the global easiness largely focused on Wall Street elites themselves and so-called experts and elite establishment control of the who know better than the rest of human- economy. It’s a similar kind of impulse ity what’s best for them and for the world in that everybody understands there’s at large. The vast majority of people who something wrong with the way things are populate NGOs and the international civil playing out. servants at the U.N. and other agencies, the European Union being a prominent one, act as if they know better how to organize the world than families and local communities. The experts believe that if you obstruct the rule of experts, the world will fall apart. Some years ago I was commissioned to do a multi-volume encyclopedia of events in the 20th century and was asked to edit older articles and provide suggestions for new pieces that could fill out the series. And it struck me as I read the predictions of experts how often, more often than not, they were wrong in their predictions. And most of my edits of earlier pieces concern just updating erroneous predictions that have been made by so-called experts. R&L: In recent years, we’ve seen popu-

15 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG IN THE LIBERAL TRADITION

LUCRETIA MOTT (1793–1880) Sarah Stanley

n January 1793, Lucretia was born movement. During the convention, a to ship captain Thomas Coffin Jr. Declaration of Sentiments was drafted I and his wife, a shopkeeper named that said, “We hold these truths to be Anna. The Coffin family were devout self-evident: That all men and wom- Quakers living in Massachusetts. Lu- en are created equal.” Those words cretia was first exposed to the concept caused a fury of controversy and led to of equality between men and women the creation of the American women’s by the example of her mother’s suc- rights movement. cessful shopkeeping while her father Mott outlined her teachings on wom- spent long periods away at sea. She en’s equality in her 1849 book Discourse attended a Quaker boarding school, on Woman. “There is nothing of greater Nine Partners, where she first learned importance to the well-being of society at of the horrors of slavery and the Quak- large,” the book begins, “than the true er teachings against the practice. She and proper position of woman.” Society became a teacher there and met her cannot function without equality of races future husband, James Mott. The two and equality of genders. She was for not married in 1811. just equal economic opportunity, but she Tragedy struck Mott in 1817 when also supported women’s equal political her toddler son, Thomas, died. Though status, including suffrage. always religious, Mott discovered that Concerned that a lack of education this difficult time developed her spiritu- for women, not any kind of biological ality and led her to become an official flaw, was holding women back in soci- member of the Quaker ministry. ety, Mott helped establish Swarthmore Lucretia was disgusted by the College in 1864. This Quaker institu- horrors of slavery and used her gift tion was one of the first coeducational for speech to fight the institution. In sue with audiences comprised of both places of higher learning. 1833, she helped create and became men and women. Those who support- On November 11, 1880, Mott died president of the Philadelphia Female ed slavery were much worse; several near Philadelphia, surrounded by her chil- Anti-Slavery Society. When the Civil times Mott was threatened by violent dren and grandchildren. Despite Mott’s War ended and many abolitionists con- mobs. Mott, a pacifist, believed in fight- work, American women did not receive sidered their work complete, Mott un- ing with words and never arms. the right to vote until 30 years after her derstood that the real war was hardly In 1840, Mott was denied an official death when the 19th Amendment was over. She continued to fight for black seat at the World Anti-Slavery Conven- ratified. suffrage and advocated for the rights tion in London because of her gender. Lucretia Mott fearlessly fought injus- of newly freed slaves. Instead of accepting this, she stood tice wherever she witnessed it. She did Mott’s passion for antislavery devel- outside the conference and spoke in not see any difference between advocat- oped into a fight for women’s rights. In favor of equality for women. During this ing for slaves or for women or for anyone 1837 in New York City, Mott organized time, she met another pioneer in wom- else whose equality wasn’t recognized. and attended the first Anti-Slavery Con- en’s rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Beyond her official work, Mott was known vention of American Women. Mott and The two women organized the famous for being an excellent hostess; she often other female speakers faced harsh 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the entertained both black and white guests criticism. Fellow abolitionists took is- catalyst for America’s women’s rights in her home.

16 He added in another manuscript, “Con- science understood in this way supplied a new basis for freedom. It carried further the range of Whiggism. The deeper Quak- ers perceived the consequences, Penn drew the consequences in the Constitu- tion of Pennsylvania. It was the standard of a new party and a new world.” The appeal was to conscience, a conscience which defied the laws of man in order to obey the law of God. It was but a step from an appeal to liberty in religion to an appeal to liberty in politics. The appeal to the higher law made by the framers of the Declaration of Independence was only a more abstract and universal conception of liberty than the appeal to conscience made in the name of religion. Acton noted, “America started with the habit of abstract ideas. Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. It came to them from religion and the Puri- tan struggle. So they went beyond conser- vation of national rights. The rights of man grew out of English toleration. It was the link between tradition and abstraction.” The appeal to the higher law made by the framers of the Declaration of In- dependence was only a more abstract and universal conception of liberty than the appeal to conscience made in the ESSAY this reason above all others that Acton so name of religion. In his Cambridge Uni- valued the American experiment. versity lecture (1901) on the American Acton repeatedly noted that the Protes- Revolution, Acton put the revolutionary tant Reformation and the wars of religion shift from rights based on the fact that Observing led to the establishment of absolutism the colonists were Englishmen to rights rather than toleration and freedom. Roy- based on a universal appeal to a higher al power and bureaucratic administration, law in this way: the American whether Catholic or Protestant, was sub- stituted for the imperatives of conscience. Then James Otis spoke, and lifted experiment Established churches used the power of the question to a different level, the state to coerce the consciences of the in one of the memorable speech- The following essay is excerpted from subject. The Puritan revolution in England es in political history. Assuming, Lord Acton: Historian and Moralist (Acton appealed to the higher law of conscience but not admitting, that the Boston Institute 2017). but then sank back into intolerance and custom-house officers were acting repression. It was the sectarians, at first legally, and within the statute, then, Photo: Left: Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull (Wikimedia). Stephen J. Tonsor in England and then in America, who justi- he said, the statute was wrong. fied religious nonconformity by an appeal Their action might be authorised to conscience. by parliament; but if so, parliament In one manuscript, Acton wrote: “The had exceeded its authority, like ohn Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton theory of conscience was full grown. It had Charles with his shipmoney, and placed liberty in the forefront of all assumed in one of the sects, a very pecu- James with the dispensing power. J goods, moral and political. Many peo- liar shape: the doctrine of inner light. The There are principles which override ple are aware that the great uncompleted Quakers not originally liberals. But the in- precedents. The laws of England project of his life was the writing of a his- ner light struggled vigorously for freedom. may be a very good thing, but there tory of freedom. He saw the evolution of In the very days in which the theory of con- is such a thing as a higher law. liberty as the work of Providence, as the science reached its extreme terms, Penn consequence, as he put it, of Christ’s be- proclaimed conscience as the teaching of Acton argued with great force that En- ing “risen on the world.” Achieved liberty his sect. And it became the basis of Penn- gland’s colonial rule in America had been is the fulfillment of the divine plan. It is for sylvania—Voltaire’s best government.” one of the mildest and most beneficent

17 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG colonial regimes in history. Americans FILM were not rebelling against oppression. The American course was justified solely on the basis of our appeal to a higher law, justified solely by an appeal to the rights of political conscience. These were argu- Using a love story to ments Acton understood, approved, and applauded. tell the world about the The foundation of the American republic was, Acton rightly understood, not com- Holodomor pleted with the successful termination of the American Revolution. The American A review of the 2017 film Bitter Harvest. Revolution created a political society in which the unchecked will of the people Rev. Anthony Perkins was paramount, state governments in which the tyranny of the majority would, sooner or later, lead to anarchy. The second great act of the founding, the making Most Americans are familiar with the Holocaust and revile the regime of the Constitution, was a conservative that committed it. Its symbols and racist ideology evoke a visceral act which made the creation of a republic reaction so strong that ideologues use them against their enemies in possible. The creation of the Constitution hopes of tainting them. Knowing that this genocide really happened had two great objects in view, the preven- helps keep us on guard against allowing it to happen here. Outside of tion of the tyranny of the majority and the rightly vilified hate groups, no one promotes the evil and antiscientific dispersion of centralized power. The fram- racist ideology that drove the Germans to the “final solution.” Even ers of the Constitution achieved these those who deny the genocidal animus behind the Holocaust are vilified. objectives not through the enunciation of This is all to the good. any new principles but by compromising The irony is that another genocide was committed in Europe and has escaped notice. contending tendencies and forces. The The regime that committed it was no less totalitarian and its ideology no less evil and an- structure of the Constitution was like the tiscientific, but its symbols and ideas evoke no widespread visceral reaction. Furthermore, structure of a medieval cathedral in which the regime’s defenders and sympathizers—not to mention those who actively deny the countervailing forces were employed in genocide it created—receive no condemnation. This genocide is known as the Holodomor such a way as to hold the whole structure (literally, “murder by starvation”), and it was committed against Ukrainians by the Soviet aloft. None of the great questions were regime. The USSR was committed to the creation of a “New Man” and the destruction of resolved: states rights, federal power, the everything and everyone that stood in its way. This included not only the bourgeois but also tariff, slavery. American federalism, which the freedom- and independence-loving nation of Ukraine. Yes, Communism was a blight on Acton reckoned one of the great inventions all 15 of the Soviet republics, but what the Communists did in Ukraine was especially brutal. of the age, was based upon compromise Between 1932 and 1933, four to 10 million Ukrainians—men, women and children living in rather than principle. From the beginning the “breadbasket of Europe”—were intentionally starved to death. this structure of republican liberty threat- One reason for our ignorance and apathy about this epic tragedy is ideological; leftist ened to collapse. In spite of their great such as Walter Duranty worked with Soviet propagandists to cover up the cause and se- achievement, Acton viewed the work of the verity of the famine. Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow (1986) and the documen- founders as incomplete and the Constitu- tary Harvest of Despair (1984) helped publicize what Ukrainian immigrant communities tion as an imperfect instrument. have long known: the intentional starvation of Ukrainians was the worst chapter in the It is my considered judgment that Acton long history of Muscovite imperialism in and against Ukraine. What remains is for the was the most knowledgeable foreign ob- Communist regime that committed the Holodomor, along with its ideology and symbols, server of American affairs in the nineteenth to work their way into our imaginations so deeply that they too become the automatic century. As a very young man he had made objects of our hatred. Recent academic work such as Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Eu- a trip to the United States and had traveled rope Between Hitler and Stalin (2010) will help, but to affect the imaginations of most widely, but the mature Acton’s knowledge Americans, movies like Bitter Harvest (2017) will help even more. of America was based upon books rather The most memorable images from Bitter Harvest portray Ukrainian country folk in bright, than direct personal experience. No Amer- embroidered clothing singing and dancing as they work and play; it may be overly roman- ican, with the exception of Henry Adams, ticized, but it is beautiful. The depictions of the midsummer feast of “Ivana Kupala” (i.e., who was nearly his exact contemporary, St. John the Baptist), with its mix of Orthodox and pagan customs, are idyllic and authentic. knew American history more thoroughly than Scenes of the courting and wedding rituals are especially bucolic and joyful. None of this Acton. It is a pity that American historians so beauty survives the brutality of Stalin’s regime, personified by the Commissar Sergei (played rarely read him. by Tamer Hassan). He beats up and eventually murders the village priest, turns its church into a prison and puts an image of Stalin up in the church where the patron icon of St. Stephen Tonsor is a professor emeritus at George had hung. The presentation may seem too cut-and-dried for sophisticated audienc- the University of Michigan. es, but all atrocities shown in the movie represent common occurrences in the Soviet Union.

18 But Sergei is not just in Ukraine to use force to implement common Soviet policy; he is there to use hunger and starvation as a means of subjugation, and if not subjugation, then anni- hilation. The main policies the Soviets used in the Holodomor were unsustainably high grain quotas and requisitions, bans on any kind of gleaning and prohibitions on travel (i.e., escape) and aid. Sergei and his soldiers are shown demanding more from the farmers than they can provide in the hopes of forcing them to give up their lands and homes and move to the collective farms. The movie also shows how ready the Soviets were to use violence. The movie also does a good, if overly romantic, job of showing the hardships suffered during the starvation. Natalka (Samantha Barks), the movie’s heroine, is tempted to consider prostitution. She dresses herself up as best as she can, even going so far as to paint her lips with her own blood, and visits Sergei seemingly to exchange her body for food. She ends up resisting his advances, but the audience cannot help but think of how often this sort of scene must have happened in real life, often to different and more tragic results. Another scene that especially highlights the terrible reality of the Holodomor occurs when some soup is shared in the village. When Natalka asks what is in the soup, the answer is “nettles and grass.” The mind is drawn to consider the despair of people who filled their soup pots with things that were never meant to be consumed. Many of the movie’s images are more direct; we are shown men, women and children dead and dying in the streets. This is no exaggeration. At the height of the famine, 30,000 people, many of them children, were dying every day from starvation. The post-occupation scenes in the village are not the only ones juxtaposed with the Edenic early scenes of village life; Kyiv becomes a nightmare of beggars, poverty, occupation and be- trayal. Again, it is overdone, but the story arc of Mykola (Aneurin Barnard), the hero's best friend, is archetypal. He is the political idealist who sees Communism as a way to bring education and prosperity to the nation he loves. He remains committed to Ukrainian nationalism and becomes the leader of the Com- munist party in Kyiv. However, he soon realizes that the Soviet plan does not allow for the continued existence of his beloved nation. He ends up taking his own life out of despair for himself and Ukraine. The movie is far from perfect. For instance, I am not convinced it provides enough information about the Soviet regime and its policies for its actions and motivations to make sense to most Photo: Right: “The Parable of the Rich Fool” by Rembrandt (Public Domain) viewers. Moreover, many will be turned off by the movie’s style. The acting is solid, but the characters are intentionally exagger- ated if not caricatured. However, it could have been worse. In other hands, there might have been an attempt to sympathize with or even excuse the totalitarian Communist regime and the men who worked to enforce its evil policies. My hope, like that of its creators, is that Bitter Harvest will help make the tragedy of the Holodomor more well-known and the ideology and symbols of Communism better understood and reviled.

Rev. Anthony Perkins is a priest in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA and a professor at St. Sophia Ukrainian Orthodox Theological Seminary.

19 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG while racial intolerance has diminished, racial segregation is becoming the norm in those areas of the country that are boom- ing economically. Cowen says this happens because “the rich and well educated are keener to live together, in tight bunches and groups, than are the less well educated.” The irony in this is that “it’s these groups—the wealthy, the well-educated, and the creative class—who often com- plain about inequality and American segregation with the greatest fervor.” Moreover, when we look past words to deeds, we see that as the “self-selection process” runs its course, “no matter how ostensibly progressive their politics,” the “affluent and well educated in America” who live in large urban areas or centers of technological innovation “may be especially out of touch” with most Americans. Liv- ing in their comfortable bubble, the most successful among us don’t understand how, for all their good intentions, they have helped create a divided society where racial segregation and income inequality are becoming more common. Nevertheless, Cowen sees technology and the matching culture as fundamentally good things. Like many of us, he uses Spotify and Pandora to find music he likes. BOOK Software to match “college roommates” or “executives and employees” are socially and economically beneficial. “The bright side” of all this is that matching technolo- When our success gies can make possible “encounters with people who truly have different outlooks than we do and who can communicate threatens our success that to us online or later maybe even in a personal meeting.” Book Review of The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American But wealth production, technological Dream (St. Martin's Press 2017). innovation and a free society share a common foundation in human and Christian Rev. Gregory Jensen virtue. Forgetting this, as Cowen’s book il- lustrates, makes us vulnerable to the dark side in matching culture. yler Cowen addresses the economic and social harms that arise We are experiencing “a fundamental from, as he says in The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating shift of societal energy away from build- Quest for the American Dream, “decisions that are at first glance” ing a new and freer world and toward in our “best interests.” As our decisions play out, they can prove rearranging the pieces in the world we Tto have consequences “at the societal level” that, while “unintended,” are already have.” For Cowen, “There was “not always good.” something to be said for less-compatible, Technological advances have created a “new culture of matching” that more challenge-laden accidental pairings has improved the quality of life for many of us. At the same time, our ability to get exactly, with all their conflicts and messy resolu- or almost exactly, what we want also allows us to avoid the disappointments and dissat- tions.” Discomfort, dissatisfaction and isfactions that inspired people to pursue the innovations that make matching possible. disappointment—whether acute, chronic, Paradoxically, getting what we want when we want it has “made us more risk averse and moral, social or economic—can spur the more set in our ways.” Our success threatens our success. kind of innovations that have made the Socially, the matching culture is “more segregated” by education, economic status and free market so successful in creating and especially race. This isn’t, as he stresses throughout the book, necessarily intentional. But distributing wealth.

20 In Cowen’s view, discomfort is also means, among other things, being produc- several possible scenarios for America’s what fosters flexibility, compromise and tive and governing our lives without need eventual “return of chaos” as the compla- other “error correction mechanisms” that of “captain, overseer or ruler” to compel cent class losses its hold on the culture. are at the heart of a free society. On this us to plant crops “in the summer” and to Though only time will tell, I suspect he is he approvingly quotes Churchill: “You can gather “food in the harvest” (6:7-8 NKJV) right when he says the “current system is always count on Americans to do the right come autumn. in some ways broken and that the compla- thing—after they’ve tried everything else.” Like the rich fool, Cowen’s America is cent class, for all its good intentions, has Our comfortable way of life has robbed us in the grip of that gentle and pleasurable in some ways failed America.” of the irritation that motivates us to try idleness about which Solomon warns us: Whether this breakdown results in future new things. Complacency has “sapped us innovation and economic growth or simply of the pioneer spirit that made America A little sleep, a little slumber, more chaos remains to be seen since. the world’s most productive and innovative Though it may appear otherwise, the free economy. Furthermore, all this has hap- A little folding of the hands to sleep— market is fragile. Economic growth, techno- pened at a time when we may need Ameri- logical innovation and a free society all de- can dynamism more than ever before.” So shall your poverty come on you pend on our willingness to endure and even Reading The Complacent Class remind- like a prowler, pursue a relative degree of discomfort. ed me of the parable of the rich fool (Luke In other words, we must remember 12:16-21). In his commentary, St. Cyril of And your need like an armed man. that the benefits of a free economy are Alexandria asks, “What does the rich man (Proverbs 6:10-11 NKJV) not guaranteed; they depend on our per- do, surrounded by a great supply of many sonal and cultural willingness to cultivate blessings beyond number?” Wealthy though Whatever its short-term attractions, a pref- virtue. As Cowen’s work suggests, the the man is, “He speaks words of poverty.” The man is gripped by “dis- tress and anxiety” because he has not “raise[d] his eyes to God” and does not “cherish love for the poor or desire the esteem it gains.” Instead of charitable self-sacrifice, the rich fool pursues a life of self-satisfaction in which he, not God, will determine “the length of his life, as if he would also Photos: Left: Public Domain. Right: Inside Gherla Prison by Richard Gould (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) reap this from the ground” as he does wheat (Com- mentary of Luke, Homily 89). “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take erence for complacency means in the long- crisis we face now is that our success your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.’ (Luke term that more and more Americans will has made us indifferent, and at times 12:19 NKJV)." slide back into the material poverty and trib- even hostile, to the moral foundation that In a word, the rich fool is complacent. alism that characterized humanity before makes success possible. Resisting complacency doesn’t mean the rise of the market economy. forgoing productivity or planning for the fu- In the last chapter, Cowen implicitly ac- Rev. Gregory Jensen is the interim pastor ture. In Proverbs, for example, we are told, knowledges the close connection between of St. Ignatius Orthodox Church in Madison, “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her complacency and a culture of moral and Wisconsin, and Orthodox chaplain at the ways and be wise” (6:6 NKJV). To be wise social decay. He lays out for the reader University of Wisconsin-Madison.

21 SPRING 2017 ACTON.ORG BRIEF Editorial Board FINDING ‘HAPPINESS’ IN A Publisher: Rev. Robert A. Sirico ROMANIAN GULAG Executive Editor: John Couretas Translated by Gabriela Ailenei NICOLAESTEINHARDT.WORDPRESS.COM Managing Editor: Sarah Stanley Graphics Editor: Peter Ho

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• Dignity of the Person • Social Nature of the Person Nicolae Steinhardt was a 20th-century writer and Orthodox hermit. He was arrested by the • Importance of Social Institutions Communist Party of Romania in 1959 when he refused to testify against a colleague who • Human Action was accused of being an enemy of the people. Steinhardt himself was accused of conspira- • Sin cy against social order and was sentenced to hard labor. He spent 13 years in a gulag-like • Rule of Law and the Subsidiary prison. There he met a Bessarabian hermit and was baptized Orthodox Christian. Role of Government After his imprisonment, Steinhardt joined the Rohia Monastery where he was a librarian • Creation of Wealth and wrote prolifically. Most of his writings were published postmortem after the Romanian • Economic Liberty Revolution. This includes his most famous work, jurnalul fericirii, “The Diary of Happiness.” • Economic Value Due to political censorship, many of Steinhardt's writings were not published until after his • Priority of Culture death, including the diary. It gained fame when it was broadcast in a series of episodes on Radio Free Europe. The following is an excerpt from this work: The notion of shared values on both All those—scholars or ordinary folk—who are satisfied to accept, as answers to the sides of the Atlantic has received big questions man asks about his purpose in the world, about the universe and life, new attention. Leaders like French about suffering and injustice, phrases like: the universe has and will always exist, life socialist president François Hollande is a natural phenomenon, chance created everything, thought is the superior form of cite “democracy, freedoms, and human consciousness, prove how very undemanding they are. These kinds of answers the respect of every individual" as are stereotypical simplifications, and they’re the equivalent of: when you’re talking to me, key values. But what about religious you should shut up. liberty, the breakdown of the welfare On the contrary, nothing is natural and everything is surprising and wondrous. Evolution state, advancing secularism and is a mystery and a miracle. The questions that our conscience asks are mysteries. Nature the health of civil society? R&L and its implacable laws are a miracle. From all sides, mysteries besiege and assail us, Transatlantic will cover these issues uninterrupted and more persistent than cosmic rays. here with new articles. And not even stupidity or indifference can constitute a strong enough magnetic field to protect us from them, the same way the earth’s magnetic field slightly amortizes the shock of cosmic mesons. Angst (or exaltation) will inevitably jolt every soul, even the most obtuse; For archived issues or to subscribe, please visit: www.acton.org. The views of in a prison cell, on the sick bed, at the moment of death, or all of a sudden on the street. the authors expressed in Religion & Every event is anti-destiny. Liberty are not necessarily those of the Every work of art is anti-nature. Every decision is anti-nothingness. To love somebody Acton Institute. is a mystery of faith. Love and forgiveness are not natural. Natural is the second principle of thermodynamics. © 2017 Acton Institute for the Study of Shestov: the evolution of the universe is not in the least natural; it would be natural if Religion and Liberty. there were absolutely nothing—no universe, no evolution.