Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher of will to power who originated the motto “God is dead,” wrote, "I think of myself as the scrawl which an unknown power scribbles across a sheet of paper, to try out a new pen" (letter to Peter Gast, August, 1881).

He was not the only one.  It seems that in our age a number of new pens are being tried out – in politics, literature, music, culture, mendacity, disgrace, and oppression.  A day is coming when the scribble will seem to fill every inch of every sheet, every placard, every wall.  And yet it will not prevail.

Tomorrow:  Defying the Natural Law

“Ten million young women rose to their feet with the cry, ‘We will not be dictated to,’ and went off and became stenographers.”

-- G.K. Chesterton

Tomorrow:  A Word to the Wise

New graduate seminar

The rise of the view that “it’s all about me” is commonly viewed as a decline in morality.  Vanderbilt law professor Edward Rubin says that’s all wrong.  He writes in his new book Soul, Self and Society: The New Morality and the Modern State that we aren’t seeing a decline in morality, but merely the rise of a new morality.

This new morality turns out to have just as many rules and prohibitions as the old one.  For example – this is Rubin’s example, not mine – one must not express disapproval of the sexual behavior of anyone else, or one will be punished by those in authority.

Well, yes, I suppose one can call such a thing a new morality.  And yes, I agree, it is strenuous and burdensome.  If anything, this dreary code of correctness has more taboos than the old one, and its strictures are not gates of life, but portals of death.

But why stop with one new morality?  The possibilities are endless.  Abortion is the token of a child-free morality.  Wife-beating expresses the exuberance of a morality of male empowerment.  Theft is the anthem of a morality more open to the sharing of wealth.

I do think Rubin misrepresents the old morality.  He writes as though fulfillment is something new in the history of ethics.  Poppycock.  Aristotle wrote that ethics is about human flourishing; St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that the ultimate goal of human life is that complete and final happiness which leaves nothing further to be desired, which turns out to be the vision of that God whom we naturally love more than ourselves.

The really distinctive mark of the so-called new morality isn’t its insistence on fulfillment, but its confusion of fulfillment with self-indulgence.  But that’s not really new either.  The old-fashioned word for it is “sin.”

Tomorrow:  What Feminism Has Achieved for Women

There have always been people who believed that happiness is having expensive toys.  But there has been a change:

“I bought a Keaton Batmobile in 2011,” writes one 52-year-old man in the Wall Street Journal .  “It’s a movie prop; it was used as the stand-in-car in the filming of the 1992 Warner Bros. movie ‘Batman Returns,’ starring Michael Keaton.  I put a Corvette engine in it and re-engineered things so it’s drivable and safe.  It has blinkers, taillights, and five cameras in it so you can see everything around you.  With all the upgrades, I easily spend a half-million dollars on it .... In the past few years, no matter what troubles have come along – business problems, divorce problems – I always think:  Yeah … but I own the Batmobile!  And that makes everything OK.”

Two generations ago, people flaunted their wealth, but never their immaturity.  If they weren’t grown up, they faked it.  They were embarrassed to be known for being shallow.  Now they expect applause for it.  Triviality is not their bane, but their ambition.

Tomorrow:  Edward Rubin’s New Morality

Why do we have constitutions, anyway?  Are we merely paying reverence to the opinions of dead men?  No.  The point of a constitution is not that the people who wrote it are necessarily wiser than we are, but that (a) we wish to be ruled by known laws, rather than by the fleeting whims of those who hold power at the moment, and (b) the fundamental design which limits the laws should be much harder to change than the laws themselves.

Constitutions shouldn’t be impossible to change:  That’s why there are procedures for constitutional amendments.  But change should be difficult.  If the constitution is treated as a “living document” the meaning of which can shift and flow in the light of “evolving standards,” then it is no longer functioning as a constitution, and there is no reason to keep it.

On the other hand, written constitutions pose a different kind of problem.  Since they are viewed as a kind of law, they tend to be interpreted by courts, and since they are viewed as a higher kind of law, courts suffer prodigious temptations to act as superlegislatures -- destroying the constitutional scheme in the very name of saving it.

Although the Framers of the U.S. Constitution were unusually talented men, they were naive about this possibility, assuming that the judiciary would be the weakest branch of government, and the legislature the strongest.  They would be dismayed and confounded by the extent to which Congress has ceded its authority to the courts and the executive.

Tomorrow:  That Makes Everything Okay