Last week Charles Murray delivered the 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute's annual dinner. His lecture, entitled "The Happiness of the People," is filled with insight. ( Here is Peter Wehner's celebration of Murray.) Murray's argument is that America is moving toward a European vision of the polity, but that scientific discoveries in biology and neuroscience will upend our confidence in European-style public policies. Like Ross Douthat, I'm a little skeptical towards the second idea. Ideology has never let "science" get in the way of its own policy agenda. The egalitarian idea is powerful. It will likely withstand the latest findings of sociobiology. What ideas have more trouble dealing with is other ideas. To confront the ideology of egalitarianism, you have to put forward an ideology of individualism. Social science might help to fight inappropriate interventions in the market. But a set of ideas preferring a society shaped by individual consumer preferences rather than government social planners helps, too. And to fight a dimunition of virtue, you have to hold up a positive conception of virtue. Here is my favorite part of Murray's lecture:
Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their "child-friendly" policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers, and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. Those same countries are ones in which jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And they, with only a few exceptions, are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, least often seen as a vocation, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest. What's happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase "a life well-lived" did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling. It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality. Let me emphasize "spreading." I'm not talking about all Europeans, by any means. That mentality goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.
Will people give this life up because they read Steven Pinker? Probably not! But they may think twice if they encounter books containing ideas that suggest that there is more to life than your BMW and "current sex partner."