Ethics Newsline®

“If the economic imperative is to develop what we call the knowledge economy, the social imperative is to develop a modern, responsible notion of citizenship.”

A tract from a civic-action group? A report from a conference of well-meaning reformers? Advice from an academic thinker?

You could be forgiven for thinking so. The sentence rings with broad strategic chords. It sets forth a well-balanced analogy. And it has an insistent tone, an almost utopian prescription for success.

In fact, the words are from British prime minister Tony Blair, in an interview September 5 with The Observer newspaper in London. The immediate context included news that two 12-year-old girls in South Yorkshire had become pregnant, bolstering Britain’s unfortunate record for having the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. His concern: parents, children, morality, and responsible behavior.

But the larger context also mattered. In the last several years, issues of moral and ethical concern have been steadily climbing up the British agenda. In the schools, there is increased talk of the need for values education. In business, executives are more energized by ethical concern — or so it can be assumed by the presence of a five-week series on “Ethical Business” in the prestigious Financial Times newspaper, launched on August 5. Government circles, too, have been exercised by moral questions as comprehensive as Northern Ireland and as personal as the improper loans accepted by former Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson.

But the phrase from Mr. Blair that stuck — and that has reverberated in the London press since — was his call for a new “moral purpose” for the young. Here’s how he put it:

“We need to find a new national moral purpose for this new generation. People want to live in a society that is without prejudice, but is with rules, with a sense of order. Government can play its part, but parents have to play their part. There’s got to be, if you like, a partnership between Government and the country to lay the foundations of that moral purpose.”

Predictably, those words were red flags to the bulls of public commentary. Some accused him of trying to impose a national morality. Some thought he was merely moralizing. Some saw him muscling into the private domain of family life. Some said he should leave this kind of conversation to the clergy.

Give him credit, however, for what he managed to do. In the context of debate over national policy, he linked two words that are usually kept separate: “moral” and “purpose.” Why is that such an achievement? Because public conversations about a nation’s purpose are usually couched in more ordinary terms. The typical adjectives are “economic,” “social,” “political,” or “global.” For each of these, we have a language, a set of conceptual frameworks, and a standing army of discussants.

Yet it can be argued that, as the world races pell-mell into the new millennium, the most meaningful debate surging around our first-intensity, high-leverage, defining issues will be the moral debate. The risk is that, as the new century pitches hardball concerns at us, we will have only a whiffleball language with which to respond. And on one thing, linguistic theory is perfectly clear: that without a language for interpreting the objects and events of our world, we simply don’t identify, or even notice, the bulk of what passes before us.

Can you quibble with Blair? Sure you can. Do “we need to find” this new moral purpose for the new generation, or do the young need to find it for themselves? Should Government be in “partnership” with the country, or is the relationship best described as something less intrusive — a stimulus, an encouragement, even a willingness to get out of the way? Is it really a responsible notion of “citizenship” that’s needed, or should that politically charged word be recast into “family” or “community” or even “individuality”? And should Blair himself be saying these things, or should the call come from some other high-profile voice or from a broad coalition of grassroots voices?

All good questions. But credit him for daring to put “moral purpose” on the table. The challenge for his government, of course, will be to continue with policies, appointments, and decisions that strike the majority as ethically sound. He’s raised the stakes. But by helping the public in Britain to begin to use a new language for public discourse, he’s also pointed them toward a new framework for judging his success.

It’s an experiment the world should watch with great interest, because it’s relevant to all of us.

(c)1999 by Rushworth M. Kidder