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Imprimis, On Line
March, 1995
IMPRIMIS (im-pri-mis), taking its name from the Latin
term, "in the first place," is the publication of
Hillsdale College. Executive Editor, Ronald L.
Trowbridge; Managing Editor, Lissa Roche; Assistant,
Patricia A. DuBois. Illustrations by Tom Curtis. The
opinions expressed in IMPRIMIS may be, but are not
necessarily, the views of Hillsdale College and its
External Programs division. Copyright 1994. Permission
to reprint in whole or part is hereby granted, provided
a version of the following credit line is used:
"Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the monthly
journal of Hillsdale College." Subscription free upon
request. ISSN 0277-8432. Circulation 580,000 worldwide,
established 1972. IMPRIMIS trademark registered in U.S.
Patent and Trade Office #1563325.
---------------------------------------------
Volume 24, No. 3
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
March 1995
---------------------------------------------
"The Moral Foundations of Society"
by Margaret Thatcher
Former Prime Minister, Great Britain
---------------------------------------------
In November 1994, Lady Thatcher delivered the
concluding lecture in Hillsdale's Center for
Constructive Alternatives seminar, "God and Man:
Perspectives on Christianity in the 20th Century"
before an audience of 2,500 students, faculty, and
guests. In an edited version of that lecture, she
examines how the Judeo-Christian tradition has provided
the moral foundations of America and other nations in
the West and contrasts their experience with that of
the former Soviet Union.
---------------------------------------------
The Moral Foundations
of the American Founding
History has taught us that freedom can not long survive
unless it is based on moral foundations. The American
founding bears ample witness to this fact. America has
become the most powerful nation in history, yet she
uses her power not for territorial expansion but to
perpetuate freedom and justice throughout the world.
For over two centuries, Americans have held fast to
their belief in freedom for all men-a belief that
springs from their spiritual heritage. John Adams,
second president of the United States, wrote in 1789,
"Our Constitution was designed only for a moral and
religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the
government of any other." That was an astonishing thing
to say, but it was true.
What kind of people built America and thus prompted
Adams to make such a statement? Sadly, too many people,
especially young people, have a hard time answering
that question. They know little of their own history.
(This is also true in Great Britain.) But America's is
a very distinguished history, nonetheless, and it has
important lessons to teach us regarding the necessity
of moral foundations.
John Winthrop, who led the Great Migration to America
in the early 17th century and who helped found the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared, "We shall be as a
City upon a Hill." On the voyage to the New World, he
told the members of his company that they must rise to
their responsibilities and learn to live as God
intended men should live: in charity, love, and
cooperation with one another. Most of the early
colonists were infused with the same spirit, and they
tried to live in accord with a Biblical ethic.
They felt they weren't able to do so in Great Britain
or elsewhere in Europe. Some of them were Protestant,
and some were Catholic; it didn't matter. What mattered
was that they did not feel they had the liberty to
worship freely and, therefore, to live freely, at home.
With enormous courage, the first American colonists set
out on a perilous journey to an unknown land-without
government subsidies and not in order to amass fortunes
but to fulfill their faith.
Christianity is based on the belief in a single God as
evolved from Judaism. Most important of all, the faith
of America's founders affirmed the sanctity of each
individual. Every human life-man or woman, child or
adult, commoner or aristocrat, rich or poor-was equal
in the eyes of the Lord. It also affirmed the
responsibility of each individual.
This was not a faith that allowed people to do whatever
they wished, regardless of the consequences. The Ten
Commandments, the injunction of Moses ("Look after your
neighbor as yourself"), the Sermon on the Mount, and
the Golden Rule made Americans feel precious-and also
accountable-for the way in which they used their God-
given talents. Thus they shared a deep sense of
obligation to one another. And, as the years passed,
they not only formed strong communities but devised
laws that would protect individual freedom-laws that
would eventually be enshrined in the Declaration of
Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
Freedom with Responsibility
Great Britain, which shares much of her history in
common with America, has also derived strength from
its moral foundations, especially since the 18th
century when freedom gradually began to spread
throughout her society. Many people were greatly
influenced by the sermons of John Wesley (1703-1791),
who took the Biblical ethic to the people in a way
which the institutional church itself had not done
previously.
But we in the West must also recognize our debt to
other cultures. In the pre-Christian era, for example,
the ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle had
much to contribute to our understanding of such
concepts as truth, goodness, and virtue. They knew full
well that responsibility was the price of freedom. Yet
it is doubtful whether truth, goodness, and virtue
founded on reason alone would have endured in the same
way as they did in the West, where they were based upon
a Biblical ethic.
Sir Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), author of The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote tellingly of the
collapse of Athens, which was the birthplace of
democracy. He judged that, in the end, more than they
wanted freedom, the Athenians wanted security. Yet they
lost everything-security, comfort, and freedom. This
was because they wanted not to give to society, but for
society to give to them. The freedom they were seeking
was freedom from responsibility. It is no wonder, then,
that they ceased to be free. In the modern world, we
should recall the Athenians' dire fate whenever we
confront demands for increased state paternalism.
To cite a more recent lesson in the importance of moral
foundations, we should listen to Czech President Vaclav
Havel, who suffered grievously for speaking up for
freedom when his nation was still under the thumb of
communism. He has observed, "In everyone there is some
longing for humanity's rightful dignity, for moral
integrity, and for a sense that transcends the world of
existence." His words suggest that in spite of all the
dread terrors of communism, it could not crush the
religious fervor of the peoples of Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union.
So long as freedom, that is, freedom with
responsibility, is grounded in morality and religion,
it will last far longer than the kind that is grounded
only in abstract, philosophical notions. Of course,
many foes of morality and religion have attempted to
argue that new scientific discoveries make belief in
God obsolete, but what they actually demonstrate is the
remarkable and unique nature of man and the universe.
It is hard not to believe that these gifts were given
by a divine Creator, who alone can unlock the secrets
of existence.
Societies Without Moral
Foundations
The most important problems we have to tackle today are
problems, ultimately, having to do with the moral
foundations of society. There are people who eagerly
accept their own freedom but do not respect the freedom
of others-they, like the Athenians, want freedom from
responsibility. But if they accept freedom for
themselves, they must respect the freedom of others. If
they expect to go about their business unhindered and
to be protected from violence, they must not hinder the
business of or do violence to others.
They would do well to look at what has happened in
societies without moral foundations. Accepting no laws
but the laws of force, these societies have been ruled
by totalitarian ideologies like Nazism, fascism, and
communism, which do not spring from the general
populace, but are imposed on it by intellectual elites.
It was two members of such an elite, Marx and Lenin,
who conceived of "dialectical materialism," the basic
doctrine of communism. It robs people of all freedom-
from freedom of worship to freedom of ownership. Marx
and Lenin desired to substitute their will not only
for all individual will but for God's will. They wanted
to plan everything; in short, they wanted to become
gods. Theirs was a breathtakingly arrogant creed, and
it denied above all else the sanctity of human life.
The l9th century French economist and philosopher
Frederic Bastiat once warned against this creed. He
questioned those who, "though they are made of the same
human clay as the rest of us, think they can take away
all our freedoms and exercise them on our behalf." He
would have been appalled but not surprised that the
communists of the 20th century took away the freedom of
millions of individuals, starting with the freedom to
worship. The communists viewed religion as "the opiate
of the people." They seized Bibles as well as all other
private property at gun point and murdered at least 10
million souls in the process.
Thus 20th century Russia entered into the greatest
experiment in government and atheism the world had ever
seen, just as America several centuries earlier had
entered into the world's greatest experiment in freedom
and faith.
Communism denied all that the Judeo-Christian tradition
taught about individual worth, human dignity, and moral
responsibility. It was not surprising that it collapsed
after a relatively brief existence. It could not
survive more than a few generations because it denied
human nature, which is fundamentally moral and
spiritual. (It is true that no one predicted the
collapse would come so quickly and so easily. In
retrospect, we know that this was due in large measure
to the firmness of President Ronald Reagan who said, in
effect, to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, "Do not try
to beat us militarily, and do not think that you can
extend your creed to the rest of the world by force.")
The West began to fight the moral battle against
communism in earnest in the 1980s, and it was our
resolve combined with the spiritual strength of the
people suffering under the system who finally said,
"Enough!"-that helped restore freedom in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union-the freedom to worship, speak,
associate, vote, establish political parties, start
businesses, own property, and much more. If communism
had been a creed with moral foundations, it might have
survived, but it was not, and it simply could not
sustain itself in a world that had such shining
examples of freedom, namely, America and Great Britain.
The Moral Foundations of Capitalism
It is important to understand that the moral
foundations of a society do not | extend only to its
political system; they must extend to its economic
system as well. America's commitment to capitalism is
unquestionably the best example of this principle.
Capitalism is not, contrary to what those on the Left
have tried to argue, an amoral system based on
selfishness, greed, and exploitation. It is a moral
system based on a Biblical ethic. There is no other
comparable system that has raised the standard of
living of millions of people, created vast new wealth
and resources, or inspired so many beneficial
innovations and technologies.
The wonderful thing about capitalism is that it does
not discriminate against the poor, as has been so often
charged; indeed, it is the only economic system that
raises the poor out of poverty. Capitalism also allows
nations that are not rich in natural resources to
prosper. If resources were the key to wealth, the
richest country in the world would be Russia, because
it has abundant supplies of everything from oil, gas,
platinum, gold, silver, aluminum, and copper to timber,
water, wildlife, and fertile soil.
Why isn't Russia the wealthiest country in the world?
Why aren't other resource-rich countries in the Third
World at the top of the list? It is because their
governments deny citizens the liberty to use their God-
given talents. Man's greatest resource is himself, but
he must be free to use that resource.
In his recent encyclical, Centesimus Annus, Pope John
Paul II addressed this issue. He wrote that the
collapse of communism is not merely to be considered as
a "technical problem." It is a consequence of the
violation of human rights. He specifically referred to
such human rights as the right to private initiative,
to own property, and to act in the marketplace.
Remember the "Parable of the Talents" in the New
Testament? Christ exhorts us to be the best we can be
by developing our skills and abilities, by succeeding
in all our tasks and endeavors. What better
description can there be of capitalism? In creating new
products, new services, and new jobs, we create a
vibrant community of work. And that community of work
serves as the basis of peace and good will among all
men.
The Pope also acknowledged that capitalism encourages
important virtues, like diligence, industriousness,
prudence, reliability, fidelity, conscientiousness, and
a tendency to save in order to invest in the future.
It is not material goods but all of these great
virtues, exhibited by individuals working together,
that constitute what we call the "marketplace."
The Moral Foundations of the Law
Freedom, whether it is the freedom of the marketplace
or any other kind, must exist within the framework of
law. Otherwise it means only freedom for the strong to
oppress the weak. Whenever I visit the former Soviet
Union, I stress this point with students, scholars,
politicians, and businessmen-in short, with everyone I
meet. Over and over again, I repeat: Freedom must be
informed by the principle of justice in order to make
it work between people. A system of laws based on
solid moral foundations must regulate the entire life
of a nation.
But this is an extremely difficult point to get across
to people with little or no experience with laws
except those based on force. The concept of justice is
entirely foreign to communism. So, too, is the concept
of equality. For over seventy years, Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union had no system of common law. There
were only the arbitrary and often contradictory
dictates of the Communist Party. There was no
independent judiciary. There was no such thing as truth
in the communist system.
And what is freedom without truth? I have been a
scientist, a lawyer, and a politician, and from my own
experience I can testify that it is nothing. The third
century Roman jurist Julius Paulus said, "What is right
is not derived from the rule, but the rule arises from
our knowledge of what is right." In other words, the
law is founded on what we believe to be true and just.
It has moral foundations. Once again, it is important
to note that the free societies of America and Great
Britain derive such foundations from a Biblical ethic.
The Moral Foundations of Democracy
Democracy is never mentioned in the Bible. When people
are gathered together, whether as families,
communities or nations, their purpose is not to
ascertain the will of the majority, but the will of
the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, I am an enthusiast of
democracy because it is about more than the will of
the majority. If it were only about the will of the
majority, it would be the right of the majority to
oppress the minority. The American Declaration of
Independence and Constitution make it clear that this
is not the case. There are certain rights which are
human rights and which no government can displace. And
when it comes to how you Americans exercise your rights
under democracy, your hearts seem to be touched by
something greater than yourselves. Your role in
democracy does not end when you cast your vote in an
election. It applies daily; the standards and values
that are the moral foundations of society are also the
foundations of your lives.
Democracy is essential to preserving freedom. As Lord
Acton reminded us, "Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely." If no individual
can be trusted with power indefinitely, it is even
more true that no government can be. It has to be
checked, and the best way of doing so is through the
will of the majority, bearing in mind that this will
can never be a substitute for individual human rights.
I am often asked whether I think there will be a single
international democracy, known as a "new world order."
Though many of us may yearn for one, I do not believe
it will ever arrive. We are misleading ourselves about
human nature when we say, "Surely we're too civilized,
too reasonable, ever to go to war again," or, "We can
rely on our governments to get together and reconcile
our differences." Tyrants are not moved by idealism.
They are moved by naked ambition. Idealism did not
stop Hitler; it did not stop Stalin. Our best hope as
sovereign nations is to maintain strong defenses.
Indeed, that has been one of the most important moral
as well as geopolitical lessons of the 20th century.
Dictators are encouraged by weakness; they are stopped
by strength. By strength, of course, I do not merely
mean military might but the resolve to use that might
against evil.
The West did show sufficient resolve against Iraq
during the Persian Gulf War. But we failed bitterly in
Bosnia. In this case, instead of showing resolve, we
preferred "diplomacy" and "consensus." As a result, a
quarter of a million people were massacred. This was a
horror that I, for one, never expected to see again in
my lifetime. But it happened. Who knows what tragedies
the future holds if we do not learn from the repeated
lessons of history? The price of freedom is still, and
always will be, eternal vigilance.
Free societies demand more care and devotion than any
others. They are, moreover, the only societies with
moral foundations, and those foundations are evident in
their political, economic, legal, cultural, and, most
importantly, spiritual life.
We who are living in the West today are fortunate.
Freedom has been bequeathed to us. We have not had to
carve it out of nothing; we have not had to pay for it
with our lives. Others before us have done so. But it
would be a grave mistake to think that freedom requires
nothing of us. Each of us has to earn freedom anew in
order to possess it. We do so not just for our own
sake, but for the sake of our children, so that they
may build a better future that will sustain over the
wider world the responsibilities and blessings of
freedom.
---------------------------------------------
Margaret Thatcher was born in 1925 and went on to earn
a degree in chemistry from Somerville College, Oxford,
as well as a master of arts degree from the University
of Oxford. For some years she worked as a research
chemist and then as a barrister, specializing in tax
law. Elected to the House of Commons in 1953, she
later held several ministerial appointments. She was
elected leader of the Opposition in 1975.
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