Shortly after taking office, British foreign secretary David Lammy described the “nature crisis” as a greater threat than terrorism because the nature crisis is “more fundamental,” “systemic,” “pervasive,” and “accelerating towards us at pace.” The Rt. Hon. Member for Tottenham was right. He just had the wrong “nature” in mind.
For the fundamental, systemic, pervasive, and accelerating crisis of the West is a crisis of human nature: a crisis in our understanding of the human person, not an environmental crisis. The human nature crisis is at the root of virtually every deep division in Western societies. Unresolved, it could lead to the dissolution of the free societies of the twenty-first century.
Thus Vice President Kamala Harris is also wrong when she says repeatedly that “there’s more that unites us than divides us.”
At one level, of course, that’s true, thankfully. The enduring decency of the American character has rarely been displayed so powerfully as it was (and is) in the massive, full-spectrum response of their neighbors to those whose lives, homes, and businesses were destroyed when Hurricane Helene ripped through western North Carolina last month. Those responding neighbors were Asheville-area wokesters, Appalachian MAGA-types, and just about everything in between. Suddenly and instinctively, none of that difference made any difference: There were people, fellow Americans, in serious distress, and it was morally incumbent upon everyone to pitch in and help. I don’t recall so moving a display of solidarity-the-virtue since 9/11.
Yet that inspiring interlude cannot and should not mask the fact that we are a deeply divided country and that the divisions are expressions of the human nature crisis.
There are some among us—and they often occupy the cultural high ground—who insist that there is no such thing as a “human nature,” no givens in the human condition; that freedom is a matter of doing whatever I like, so long as “no one else gets hurt”; that the satisfaction of desires is the full meaning of “human rights,” meaning that virtually all human relationships are transactional. And because of all that, a six-month-old unborn child can be “terminated” at will, just as someone facing a terminal disease can terminate himself with a physician’s assistance.
There are others among us who believe that, as human beings, we bear a unique dignity and worth; that there are certain deep truths inscribed in the world and in us; that living those truths facilitates personal happiness and social solidarity; that a mature and ennobling freedom, as lived by adults rather than by willful toddlers (and their chronologically mature counterparts), is not a matter of “I did it my way,” but rather a matter of knowing the right thing, doing the right thing for the right reason, and doing the right thing with regularity. And because of all that, innocent human beings, from conception until natural death, deserve to be cherished in life and protected in law.
The great human nature divide thus expresses itself in diametrically opposed concepts of what it means to be a free person and a free people. Moreover, the human nature divide in our national politics has metastasized, such that both major parties are committed—in varying degrees—to the debased notion of freedom as personal autonomy in service to immediate gratification. This false idea of human nature has impacts far beyond life issues.
It turns our public life into an auction in which candidates vie to see who can bribe more special interests, using the public purse as a political piggy bank. It distracts attention from the fiscal obscenity of an Everest of mounting debt, which could bankrupt the country, place terrible burdens on future generations, and jeopardize our national security (as when China calls in all those IOUs). It contributes to the vulgarization of our culture, which in turn contributes to the further degradation of our politics—compare the funny but entirely civil exchange between candidates Kennedy and Nixon at the 1960 Al Smith Memorial Dinner in New York with the tawdry show put on by candidates Harris and Trump at that event this past October 17.
So yes, we have a “nature crisis,” but it’s far more about us than it is about trees and oceans. It’s about who we are and how our idea of who we are ennobles or debases our common life. Given an ever-darkening international landscape and the pandering of both parties to our baser instincts, the realistic conclusion is that whoever wins the White House, hard times are coming.
The response to that must be a deep renewal of our political culture, rooted in the truth about the human person.
George Weigel’s column “The Catholic Difference” is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington, D.C.’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
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