The Hard Truths of Responsible Governance

'In no case may a Christian governor promote an evil, hoping that something good may be gotten out of it; though he may refrain from punishing an evil if punishment is likely to lead to evils that are even worse.'

From Crisis

By Anthony Esolen, PhD

You cannot have peace by merely assuming that people are going always to be pacific, reasonable, restrained in their desires, deferent to authority, and considerate of others.

I confess a fondness for the old Star Trek television series, which had little to do with science and a lot to do with perennial questions regarding human nature; Paradise Lost or Gunsmoke in outer space. One episode commonly named as among the best, “The City on the Edge of Forever,” presents to the shrewd but passionate Captain Kirk a terrible conundrum. The ship’s surgeon, Dr. McCoy, has accidentally injected himself with a drug that causes insanity. In that state, he has beamed down to an uninhabited planet and raced through a time-traveling and space-transcending portal, ending up on Earth shortly before the Second World War.  

As soon as McCoy disappears, Kirk, on the planet with a small landing party, finds that he can no longer contact his ship. The Enterprise no longer exists because McCoy has done something on earth to change the course of history. So, Kirk and his first officer, the hyper-rationalist Vulcan Mr. Spock, must enter the portal and try to locate McCoy and prevent him from doing—something; we don’t know what.

It happens that the focus of the change is a young woman, Edith Keeler, a forward-thinking pacifist who runs a mission during the Depression. She is lovely and intelligent, and Kirk, who cannot reveal who he is and who is unsure that he will ever return to his own world, falls in love with her. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Spock, examining the recordings he made when he and the others were in front of the portal and human history was passing before their eyes, learns that there are two possibilities. Edith Keeler will be struck by an automobile and will die, or the accident will be averted, she will live, she will lead a peace movement that gains the ear of President Roosevelt, America will not enter the war in time, the Nazis will win, and Earth will enter a period of protracted misery and bloodshed. At stake, now, are the fate of the Enterprise and the lives of millions of people.

Nothing in the episode suggests that killing Miss Keeler is an option. Evil must not be done to avert a greater evil. Nor is the young lady presented as foolish. Kirk and Spock concur that she is—or would be—right, but it is the wrong time. The moral imperative for peace is right, but pacifism is another matter, as its exercise as an absolute can be disastrous in failing to account for the needs of the time. A governor must be wise and not let his eyes be dazzled by dreams of what might be so that he does not see what is—and what demands his attention.

The episode ends with a terrible irony: were it not for the presence of Kirk and Spock, and their sudden reunion with McCoy, Edith Keeler, astonished, would not have wandered into the street, oblivious to the oncoming car. McCoy is about to leap to save her when Kirk—in agony—holds him back.

I do not suggest that the creator of the series, Gene Roddenberry, understood the Christian faith. He seems to have agreed with Blake, that “Milton was of the devil’s party, though he knew it not,” presenting the fall of man as an ascent from blind obedience to self-direction and self-rule. But for all his theological muddle, he was not stupid about mankind. 

This episode, like many others, suggests that you cannot have peace in Dodge City or in the United Federation of Planets if you merely assume that people are going always to be pacific, reasonable, restrained in their desires, deferent to authority, and considerate of others. Rather, people stir up strife, are irrational, let their desires take the whip in hand, rebel against authority, and tell others to get lost or go to hell. Even good people can be at odds with one another when the goods they seek cannot be had simultaneously, when they see one good but not the other, or when they make honest mistakes about what might or might not be of benefit.

Governing well, then, is a difficult art, and it cannot proceed by pleasant slogans. We Christians should consider it well. The kingship of Christ does mean that all human society, to be most truly human and most truly social, must conform to the pattern of Christ and must be led by His command. But that does not mean that we can merely conflate personal and political duties. The governor must govern for the common good, and that requires foresight, a broad vision of mutually interacting social forces, a knowledge of human nature in its fallen state, and good judgment as to probabilities of success or failure and the costs and the gains to be expected.  

This is not consequentialism, which posits that an act is good or bad depending upon its likely consequences alone. In no case may a Christian governor promote an evil, hoping that something good may be gotten out of it; though he may refrain from punishing an evil if punishment is likely to lead to evils that are even worse. We are rather talking about things that are morally permissible.It may be a wonderfully generous thing to welcome anyone into your home, without reservation. But a governor has more to consider than his private feelings. His first duty is to the people he governs. If all people were reasonable, if the riches of the earth were easy to procure, if poverty were but a thing to read about in history books, and if there were no such things as cultures to be protected and fostered rather than to be homogenized, then he might well be a kind of pacifist in immigration, just as Miss Keeler was a pacifist in armaments. 

But, since none of the conditions above are the case, the governor is responsible for governing and not for giving way to an idle slogan. All the pertinent questions must be addressed: who, where, why, how many, with what probable effects, and so forth. None of these can be answered apart from the particulars. Again, we are not talking about committing a wrong so that good may come from it. We are talking about the kind of moral action the governor must exercise.

Likewise, it is one thing for me, as an individual person, to look the other way as somebody pinches bread from my store. Maybe I see he is hungry. Maybe it’s a rare occurrence, and I don’t want to make a fuss. It is another thing if a policeman looks the other way, or if the mayor declares that petty theft will not be prosecuted. Then the law itself is at stake, and as things go on, I will have to take measures to see that my store is not nickeled and dimed to death. The common good suffers, as does the ordinary trust that is more fundamental to a society than are its laws. Such mercy proves to be strangely ruthless in effect.

I think the point applies also to what churchmen do in their charge to govern, rather than to minister to persons in trouble. Assume that a priest is not conniving to approve of a sin he himself has committed. Assume that he wants only to be kind. He permits a couple to receive Communion when they are advertising their sin for all to see, to condone, and even to celebrate. The message he sends is that other sins in that general category, including many that are far different from the one at issue, are unimportant. 

The permission becomes a new “rule,” and people alter their thoughts and their behavior accordingly—to their harm as individuals and as a society, because sin is its own inevitable punishment. The farther harm extends to the idea of any moral law at all, and we see sprouting up the old weeds of antinomianism and Marcionism, or the enthusiasms of groups like the Family of Love, who believed that the Holy Spirit had ushered in a new age of liberty and a new paradise. The devils crowed. 

And history passes before our eyes, thus: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.