Taking Our Bombs Too Lightly

As far as I can recall, Jeffrey Stout is the only person who has managed to make me come close to tears at an academic lecture. The occasion was his plenary at the 2007 American Academy of Religion meeting in San Diego, later published in the JAAR as “The Folly of Secularism.” At the time I was bringing to a close my academic work at U.C. Santa Barbara and preparing to take what I had learned in the classroom to New York, to the words I would write, and to an unknown future. Though himself not a religious believer or practicer, Stout made a plea for the legacy of American religious traditions in the shaping of democratic institutions. To me, then and there, the meaning was: we don’t have to agree with each other to fight for justice together. Maybe by writing about religions in this country, helping them to know one another and find their common humanity, I might be a small part of that fight.

One of the highlights of my trip up to Brown last week was the chance opportunity to hear Stout speak again, on March 6th. This time, his title was “It’s a Boy: How Militarism Has Corrupted the Republic.” Again, I am deeply grateful to see him taking up this matter—it comes at a time when I am in the process of finding ways to engage militarism in my own work. To find him with the same things on his mind is deeply encouraging. Stout exercises philosophy of a kind that gives me hope for the whole enterprise—that it might be heartfelt and engaged while also, as a matter of course, rigorous.

Stout’s title repeats the short message sent by physicist Edward Teller at the successful detonation of the first hydrogen bomb in 1952: “It’s a boy.” The phrase is, I can’t help but notice, a far cry from what Robert Oppenheimer famously muttered seven years earlier at the Trinity test (pictured above), invoking the Bhagavad Gita: “I am death, destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer’s words attempt to grapple with the human consequences of the event. Teller’s jauntily embrace them. Since the Founding Fathers, who knew from experience the dangers of imperialism, Stout argues that our politics has grown far too casual about dominating others militarily. The public’s willingness to not only accept the false premises of the 2003 invasion of Iraq but, a year later, to reelect its perpetrators, is the most astonishing symptom of our civic atrophy. We have set a very dangerous precedent.

As a pragmatist, he calls for us—not the leaders but us—to step up with more robust “practices of accountability.” Citizen institutions must act as a “counter-power,” preventing those in government from exercising force arbitrarily. Only through them, our potentially-despotic republic can become, truly, a democracy. The consequences of failing—which may now be already inevitable—are drastic, far more than any of the far-flung conflicts that defined the “American century.” As countries like China and India grow ascendant, the world will hold them, at the very least, to the standards of the superpowers that preceded them. If we cannot show that a democratic, just exercise of strength is possible in this world, we may suffer the consequences firsthand at the mercy of others.

One might quickly ask: To what standards do we hold leaders accountable to in the first place? How do we agree? Stout, for instance, evaluates Iraq from the perspective of just-war tradition, while I would push for a more radical pacifist ideal. Fortunately, one need go little farther than Stout’s earlier writings, such as Ethics after Babel and Democracy and Tradition. There, he offers compelling accounts of how the very process of democratic institution-building can create—and has often created—the conditions necessary for a habitable agreement.

My favorite moment in the talk was Stout’s response to a question about what advice he would give Obama. He started trying to answer, then stopped himself. As appealing as it seems to have the ear of the Commander-in-Chief, his argument isn’t meant for the president alone. Far from it. The work of establishing these conditions, and of reconciling moral traditions, is anything but a gnostic exercise to be carried out at the highest levels. It cannot be worked out by professional philosophers alone, nor by benevolent leaders. All people share in the burden of philosophy, in the responsibility to hold those in power accountable, and in the opportunity to enact their philosophies through civic institutions. After all, we can only know the truth of what we actually try, and democracy will only come when we act democratically.

Like Edward Teller, American democracy, such as it is, still takes its bombs far too lightly. As citizens, we have failed to own up to the responsibility we bear. The consequence has been a far too casual habit of violent domination, with military abroad and prisons at home. Benevolent pronouncements, which we hear much of lately, are not enough. Says Stout, rightly, America’s enemies “mock our talk of liberty because our bases speak louder than our words.”

That’s a funny statement for a writer to deal with. What do I have but words and theories? Well, the difference between Oppenheimer and Teller was so plainly evident in their words. Their theories unleashed nuclear force. In theories and words, one can at least take the means and ends of destruction seriously, for what they are, never permitting them to slip into the disguise of lightness.