Opinion: Another time Americans anguished over finding right path
Editor’s note: This opinion column by syndicated columnist James Reston appeared in The Atlanta Constitution of Labor Day 1973.
WASHINGTON -- In every great crisis of violence or corruption in our national life, Americans tend either to turn away from it in cynicism or to attribute it to the moral decline of the nation as a whole. It’s an old American habit: we either forget or bleed.
Still, at the beginning of a new season, when even Washington is getting the first sweep of cool, clear autumnal air, one wonders whether we couldn’t have a little more honest discussion in America about how all these strange things happened and what, if anything, they mean about our values and purposes.
After the murder of President Kennedy, and long before the Watergate burglary, the board of trustees at the Rockefeller Foundation met at Williamsburg, Va., to talk about precisely this question.
This foundation has spent hundreds of millions of dollars analyzing practical scientific problems, race problems, political and constitutional problems, cultural problems -- but now they were asking in William James’ words how “to make an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly” about values, morals and purposes. Could the thing be done?
They didn’t know, but they got a few people together to talk about it -- Dr. Hannah Arendt, Dr. Paul Freund, Irving Kristol, and Dr. Hans Morgenthau, and the new head of the Rockefeller Foundation, John H. Knowles, M.D., stated the fundamental question: What is the moral and ethical framework in which we are all living; of our work as a nation, as individuals, as institutions, in our relations with one another and with the world? We go on doing our jobs, but what’s the meaning and purpose of all this energy?
This was the general question. And the specific question was why so many people felt isolated, pointless, and even helpless, and whether it was possible or useful to organize ways of talking, not only about legislation to deter violence and corruption, but about morals and values.
Everybody in this careful and illuminating Rockefeller Foundation discussion seemed to agree about the central issue: that we should be discussing all kinds of fundamental questions that are being ignored in the public dialogue today.
Paul Freund argued that it was important to discuss the questions of values and purposes, even if you couldn’t resolve them, and also, that it was important that these questions should be discussed not only by the privileged or elitist university people but by the plain and ordinary people of the nation.
The tragedy is that such a sincere and careful analysis of our problems doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. The people are left with the politicians and reporters and the editorial writers and the thoughtful people at foundation meetings who do the best they can but in the end do not really answer the questions they raise.
The brilliant discussion by Arendt, Freund, Kristol and Morgenthau in the Rockefeller discussion defined the problem, but like the press and most of the rest of the people in Washington didn’t help much in resolving it. Still, they were getting at something fundamental.
My own view is that, while the American people today don’t believe in the old institutions, and are confused by this vague debate, they still believe in believing in the old values and yearn for some practical way to escape from the isolation and impotence that trouble their lives.
I also believe that there is a remnant in very institution in the nation, from the Congress or the churches to the universities or labor unions or Chambers of Commerce -- that would welcome the chance to discuss the purposes of their work and lives, the “moral and ethical framework,” if only somebody would give a lead on how to do it and define the questions for discussion.
Maybe this is where the foundations, like Rockefeller’s, can help. The problem is not mainly to try and answer the question of morals and values and purposes, but merely to get down on paper, as simply as possible, a definition or case study of the facts, questions and possible answers, with arguments for and against, so that thoughtful people can, if they wish, get together and talk coherently about the things that trouble them.
The way things are in the present crisis of Watergate, the people are dividing for and against the President, for and against the parties and the system and the press, but the causes of our present dilemmas are much more complex than that, and nobody brings the basic questions down to any practical form in which they can be debated.
“We would know how to build a good country,” Robert Goheen told the Rockefeller Foundation trustees, “if we were confident what ‘good’ means ... . We want to do the right thing but too often have trouble agreeing on what right means.” The Rockefeller Foundation agreed and it is now searching for ways that these questions of values can be discussed effectively, not merely in foundations or by politicians or columnists, but by thoughtful people in their own communities and their own institutions.”
