AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE GOOD SOCIETY Walter Lippmann

The fascists declared that liberalism corrupts the national spirit; the communists that it corrupts class consciousness. Marx and Hegel, Nietzsche and Alfred Rosenberg, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, reached agreement on common ground. They agreed that the conscience of free men is incompatible with their purposes.

But for their realization that the human essence stands in their way, the actual collectivists would not go to such lengths to eradicate religion among their subjects. They would not, amidst all the immediate difficulties which confront them, find it necessary to strike at the practice of religion. But they do. Collectivist regimes are always profoundly irreligious. For religious experience entails the recognition of an inviolable essence of men; it cultivates a self-respect and a self-reliance, which tend at some point to resist the total subjection of the individual to any earthly power. By the religious experience the humblest communicant is led into the presence of a power so much greater than his master's that the distinctions of this world are of little importance. So it is no accident that the only open challenge to the totalitarian state has come from men of deep religious faith. For in their faith they are vindicated as immortal souls, and from this enhancement of their dignity they find the reason why they must offer a perpetual challenge to the dominion of men over men.

It must always be the ambition of the despot to destroy religion if he cannot exploit it as an instrument of his power. In the religious controversies in Russia and Italy and Germany, the immediate issue has often seemed to be whether the clergy should rule the politicians or the politicians should rule the clergy. Though the issue is obscured where ministers of religion are themselves worldlings greedy for power and wealth, the underlying issue has always been whether religious experience should be subservient to or should be allowed to correct secular purposes. In the powerful national collectivist states of our time, the sins of the clergy have been a pretext, seized upon by the collectivists in their determination to stamp out the ultimate resistance of the human soul. The real reason for the irreligion of fascists and communists is that religion cultivates a respect for men as men. Against that respect the totalitarian state cannot long prevail. That is why, though all the so-called class enemies had been cowed or exterminated in Russia, though the democrats, socialists, pacifists, had been beaten, exiled, or put in Italian or German concentration camps, the dictators, for what looked like no good reason at all, went on to attack the churches and the religious life. They were well advised. They are not stupid men. They have appraised the religious life correctly when they have seen in it the source of the infection, or, as we should call it, the source of the inspiration, that makes men secure in their manhood, rejects the pretensions of their masters, invests the human personality with infinite dignity and untold promise. They have seen truly that the religious experience must forever raise up new enemies of the totalitarian state. For in that experience the convictions which the dictators must crush are bred and continually renewed.

The Good Society