The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories. - book reviews

Reason, Dec, 1994 by Nick Gillespie

At some point in my late teens, my father confided that he was sorry that my siblings and I--and children in general--were forced to "grow up so soon these days" (this was in the early '80s). He wished, he said, that kids could be better protected from the rough-and-tumble problems of the adult world, as they had been when he was young.

I remember thinking: What the hell is he talking about? Here was a guy who was born (at home, by a midwife!) into truly marginal social and economic conditions in New York City in 1923; who almost died of rheumatic fever and saw friends crippled by polio; who came of age during the Great Depression; who started working at age 12 to help support his family; who once stood in line for hours when a department store offered free winter coats to needy children; whose adolescence was spent moving to shabbier and shabbier apartments in worse and worse slums; whose social milieu consisted of broken homes and drunken or absent fathers; and whose own youth ended definitively when he landed at Normandy beach as part of the D-Day invasion. And here he was, telling me--a kid raised in the taken-for-granted luxury we obfuscate with the term "middle-class"--that my peers and I had seen too much, too soon. I came to the logical conclusion that my father was senile.

A dozen or so years later, I'm certain my old man was not senile. And as my first child approaches his first birthday, I think my father might even have been right about the changed nature of childhood. Or, rather, I have a better understanding of what he was talking about. I've come to realize that as a parent you view the world of your child through the eyes of a stranger in a strange land. Even as you attempt to guide and protect your charge through the sweets of New Babylon, you realize that you do not really speak the language, know the rituals, or comprehend the customs of the world in which your child will live. It is flush with dangers--and opportunities--that you never encountered. By contrast, the world of your own childhood is tetra cognita and, by default, a less-foreboding place. Unfortunately, most of what you learned growing up is by necessity outdated, outmoded, and obsolete.

What, then, can a parent teach a child that will be of any enduring use or relevance? This is the question that explicitly informs William J. Bennett's The Book of Virtues, a "compendium of great stories, poems, and essays from the stock of human history and literature" which bills itself as a "'how-to' book for moral literacy." For Bennett, the first job of adults is to educate youth in "the traits of characters we most admire." "[Children] must," writes Bennett in his engaging, eminently sensible introduction, "achieve a minimal level of moral literacy that will enable them to make sense of what they see in life and, we may hope, help them live it well." He is, in short, talking about general principles which, though learned under specific circumstances, allow an individual to make meaningful, conscious decisions in new and obscure situations.

A couple of years ago, such talk would have branded Bennett a conservative crackpot, a Reaganite leftover who mistook Father Knows Best for reality. But nowadays, The Atlantic Monthly certifies that "Dan Quayle was right" and elected officials--especially Bill Clinton --want to talk about "values" and "virtues." Judging from the critical and popular reception The Book of Virtues has received, people are interested in the conversation. Earlier this year, The New Republic suggested Bennett's book "compels respect," a sentiment apparently shared by readers writ large: As of mid-September, The Book of Virtues had spent 38 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list and showed no signs of dropping off.

Not just the cultural climate has changed, however. This is a kinder, gentler Bill Bennett, certainly not the drug czar who once flirted with notions such as publicly hanging drug dealers and shooting down planes suspected of carrying drugs. It may just be possible that Bennett is lurching towards a grudging, pragmatic libertarianism. Especially over the past year or so, he has been outspoken on the need to shrink the state and to rely on non-coercive means of achieving a particular sort of society (as Bush's drug czar and Reagan's secretary of education, he often favored expanded roles for the government).

"There are real limits to what the state can do, particularly when it comes to imparting virtue and forming character," writes Bennett in the 1993 edition of his Index of Leading Cultural Indicators. In this sentiment, he moves beyond traditional conservatism which, as F. A. Hayek pointed out, "is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with...who wields them."

Having occupied the seat of power himself, Bennett seems now to understand that big government, whether "conservative" or "liberal" in bent, undermines social order. "There is a role for government," Bennett recently told the Los Angeles Times Magazine, "but it has become the place of first resort for every problem....It seems to me we ought to devolve government, get [its functions] to the state level, the local level, to communities and non-government entities, and right on to the logical extension--to the people themselves." Accordingly, Bennett has withdrawn from the political arena--he recently declared he will not seek the GOP presidential nomination--and has opened up shop in the marketplace of ideas.