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The Church and Liberal Democracy
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Russian aiul I{astern European societ ies , they have been through a spiritual
training far advanced o f the Western experience :
Life’s complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deep
er, and more interesting characters than those generated by the stan
dardized Western well-being. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot
remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as in our country. But it is also
demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you
have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the
human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those of
fered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion
of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.10
It is tempting to dismiss such attacks as failing to understand the charac
ter of the American people or our form of government. Some have suggested
that Solzhenitsyn has confused a social and cultural critique with a political
critique.11 Yet to dismiss Solzhenitsyn in this way is but to manifest the
problem he is trying to point out. For we have assumed that we can form a
polity that ignores the relation between politics and moral virtue. In contrast,
Solzhenitsyn takes the classical view that it should be the function of politics
to direct people individually and collectively toward the good.12
Thus Solzhenitsyn’s critique is radical insofar as it reaches to the roots
of our societal presuppositions. In effect he is suggesting that when freedom
becomes an end in itself people lose their ability to make sacrifices for worthy
ends. The problem with our society is not that democracy has not worked, but
that it has, and the results are less than good.13We have been freed to pursue
happiness and ‘‘every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and mate
rial goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the
achievement of happiness. In the process, however, one psychological detail
has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still
better life and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with
worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings.
Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a
way to free spiritual development.” 14
Moreover, one of the great ironies of our society is that by attempting to
make freedom an end in itself we have become an excessively legalistic
society. As Solzhenitsyn points out, we feel there is little need for voluntary
self-restraint, as we are free to operate to the limit of the law. Thus in
condemning Richard Nixon, virtues of decency and honesty were invoked,
but the legal system offered the only code by which the unacceptableness of
those actions could be clearly and cogently expressed. An insightful commen
tator of the “Talk of the Town” column in the
New Yorker
observed that