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PATRICK DIGGINS
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demonstrating why virtue never worked in ancient republics and why
America can dispense with it along with religion." either Philosophy,
nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom will ever govern Nations or
Parties, against their Vanity, their Pride, their Resentment or Revenge,
or their Avarice or Ambition."
Adams told the French critics that America's thirteen colonies and
their new constitutions are "founded on the natural authority of the
people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery." The rest of the
world can now look to America to see how the "rights of mankind" can
be grounded in constitutions that work of their own mechanisms.
The experiment is made and has completely succeeded; it can no
longer be called in question whether authority in magistrates and
obedience in citizens can be grounded on reason, morality, and the
Christian religion, without the monkery of priests or the knavery
of politicians.
Adams looked to a well-structured political system to compensate for
the unreliable incantations of religion and virtue.
The problem with Lieberman projecting religion back into American
history is that Judaism lacks what Adams and others believed to be
essential to understanding human nature-the concept of original sin,
the very impediment that renders humanity too imperfect to imitate
Jesus or to know God. "As a people," Lieberman exhorted, "we need
to reaffirm our faith and restore the dedication to our God and to God's
purposes." Easier said than done. "The Almighty has His own pur–
poses," Abraham Lincoln told the American people when, during the
bloody Civil War, he observed that both North and South prayed to the
same God, and the appeals of neither were answered.
In his acceptance speech Lieberman mentioned God thirteen times.
Several of those who came to his defense reminded us that the number
didn't come close to Lincoln's many references to God. Yet it is one
thing to refer to God and an entirely different matter to question a
Supreme Being for having possibly willed a war and all its suffering and
to tell the American people that they will be subjected to the "judgment
of the Lord." [n his famous "Second Inaugural Address," Lincoln came
close to doubting God's omniscience and goodness because His ways
remain unascertainable. "And that He gives to both North and South,
this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence Islavery]
came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attrib–
utes which believers in a Living God always ascribed to Him?"
