Niebuhr- The Relationship Between Virtue and Prosperity

I would like to revisit an idea I entertained while thinking about health care reform:

"There are many myths behind the anger roused by health care reform debates, and one of the myths at the heart of the conservative unconsciousness is that the upper and middle classes deserve more because they work harder while the poorer classes are in an economically and socially inferior position because they are lazy and choose not to work to improve their lot in life. This fallacious idea, heavily influenced by America’s Protestant background, merits a lengthy discussion debunking such a noxious idea. This is not that discussion."

This now is that discussion or, at least, a partial discussion.

Reinhold Niebuhr expounds upon the relationship between virtue and prosperity in American thought in his book The Irony of American History:

"From (the Puritan day) to this it has remained one of the most difficult achievements for our nation to recognize the fortuitous and providential element in our good fortune. If either moral pride or the spirit of rationalism tries to draw every element in a historic situation into rational coherence, and persuades us to establish a direct congruity between our good fortune and our virtue or our skill, we will inevitably claim more for our contribution to our prosperity than the facts warrant. This has remained a source of moral confusion in American life."

This moral confusion was felt in 1952 (when Niebuhr book was published) and is certainly felt today, for instance, in the health care debate. I attributed America's Protestant background as the major influence on this confusion, which, Niebuhr suggests, is partly true. There is, however, another influence, and that is Jeffersonian ideology:

"Our American Puritanism contributed to our prosperity by only slightly different emphasis than Jeffersonianism. According to the Jeffersonians, prosperity and well-being should be sought as the basis of virtue. They believe that if each citizen found contentment in a justly and richly rewarded toil he would not be disposed to take advantage of his neighbor. The Puritans regarded virtue as the basis of prosperity, rather than prosperity as the basis of virtue. But in any case the fusion of these two forces created a preoccupation with the material circumstances of life which a more consistent bourgeois ethos than that of even the most advanced nations of Europe."

Thus, this moral confusion is part of the fabric of American culture. This erroneous belief seems so obvious, yet it permeates our debates and, consequently, greatly influences the American political process. Niebuhr summarized the quoted section more articulately and thoughtfully than I could ever hope to:

"Our difficulty as a nation is that we must now learn that prosperity is not simply coordinated to virtue, that virtue is not simply coordinated to historic destiny and that happiness is no simple possibility of human existence."

I would add more to the discussion, but Niebuhr is a better and more enthralling guide than I, one whom I will be quoting from often.