3 GREAT READS FROM THE NEW CRITERION

THE SELF-INTERESTED SOCIETY

In spite of these facts, two remarkable beliefs have come to be widely held about free, Western societies.

The first is that human beings are naturally selfish creatures, and that they can only become virtuous by overcoming their natural self-partiality. This moral opinion descends from some versions of Christianity, was powerfully taken up by French moralists in the seventeenth century, contributed to satirical views of commerce in the early eighteenth century, was influentially refuted by Adam Smith, and was revived to plague us once more by the Marxists (and other ideologists) in the nineteenth century. But the individualist, in pursuing self-interest, is not, according to our critics, overcoming self-partiality.

The second and related view is that Western Civilization is technically prodigious but has basically failed to overcome prejudice, superstition (e.g. religion), bigotry, racism, imperialism, national selfishness, and other such evils from which only the wisdom of international organizations can save us. This curious form of civilizational self-hatred results not from judging that we are worse than others but from the belief that since we have more control over our nature, we ought to have been able to do better.

THE PLOT TO SAVE AMERICA

One oft-overlooked aspect of the Constitution's genius is the Framers' humility. They had two animating ideals to guide the Republic they designed. The first, of course, was liberty: The United States would be the first Republic in history in which sovereignty was vested in "We the People," not the central government; in which the central government's function was to serve rather than rule the people; and in which the citizen's autonomy over his life and property was presumed - the central government permitted to burden it only in limited and strictly defined ways. The second ideal was separation of powers: The recognition that power was necessary but inherently corruptive. For liberty to survive, power would need to be divided in a calculated manner, not just among the three branches of the new central government, but also among the central government, the states (which were to retain sovereignty notwithstanding the creation of the Union), and individual citizens.

The Framers were confident about these enduring ideals for a flourishing, free society. Nevertheless, they were sage enough to realize they were mere men. They had undoubtedly made errors. Though they disagreed with the anti-Federalists, the persuasive force of many contentions lodged in opposition to the Constitution was not lost on them. Moreover, even if the compromises they made and the balance of power they struck were suitable to the conditions of the late eighteenth century, they understood that those arrangements might not be suitable forever. History is dynamic. To persevere, a Constitution would need a process for self-correction and for maintaining its animating ideals through changing times.

ORE OR ORDURE?

Grimly reconciled though one may be to the annual flood of books by and about the Beat Generation, it's particularly depressing to see Jack Kerouac's poetry, of all things, enshrined in the Library of America, that magnificent series designed to preserve for posterity the treasures of our national literature. To read through these seven hundred–odd pages of Kerouac's staggeringly slapdash effusions set in elegant Galliard, outfitted with the usual meticulous editorial apparatus, and bound - like Twain's novels and Lincoln's speeches - in a beautiful Library of America volume is enough to trigger a serious attack of cognitive dissonance.

Earnest souls who are prepared to give Kerouac's outpourings every possible chance, and who yearn for guidance and insight from someone who admires them, can expect no help from the editor Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell, whose introduction mixes pages and pages of quotations from the poems themselves with doses of hyperbole about the composition of verse. ("To be a poet's poet is to hurt. To hurt singularly, to hurt incomprehensibly, to suffer a wound that never heals, a wound not meant to heal because bleeding is the very nature of this wound - it is a divine gift - it is the wound of a savior.") She does manage to make a couple of coherent points - namely, that Kerouac was deeply Catholic and grew up surrounded by death - but this doesn't even begin to help us figure out what to make of these poems, throughout which, consistent in his indifference to technique, Kerouac is clearly speaking to no one but himself.