Setting a Course for Society

To Stephen Carter, integrity is like football. First, you figure out the rules for right and wrong. Then you act on them, even at your own expense.

A Yale Law School professor and constitutional law scholar, Carter, 41, captured national attention three years ago when President Clinton praised his book, “The Culture of Disbelief” (Basic Books, 1993). In it, Carter defends the place of religion in public debate.

Then as now, he speaks and writes openly about his own religious beliefs as an Episcopalian. But his latest work, “(integrity)” (Basic Books), proves that ethics remains a near and dear subject. Too often, he says, people are rewarded for breaking the rules.

“We’re in an integrity crisis,” says Carter, the father of two children, Leah Cristina, 10, and Andrew David, 7. “I see it as a parent, and as a citizen. As a citizen, I’m deeply concerned about the erosion of our democracy. We haven’t had the integrity of our aspirations.”

Carter found support for this argument while he watched a football game on television with his children. A player had missed a pass but pretended he’d caught it, rolled on the ground and jumped up, celebrating.

Carter writes about this incident in the first chapter of “(integrity)” to show just how much we need this book. What was foul about the football game affects us all, he writes. “For it captures precisely what is wrong with America today: We care far more about winning than about playing by the rules.”

Carter who lives just outside New Haven, Conn., was in Los Angeles recently to promote his new book and cast his lawyer eyes across Beverly Hills for the first time, where pink hotels, Versailles-like mansions and taco stands share the same space.

Zoning laws are a bit like marriage, which Carter also writes about. Zones help us recognize the right place and the wrong place to put things. He gives the example of a married man who confessed on his death bed that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The man poured his guilty conscience into his wife’s heart, then died in peace. But he took her peace of mind with him, because he left before they had a chance to resolve things.

“This man’s action shows a lack of integrity because one duty of marriage is the care of the spouse,” by Carter’s analysis. “Truth and honesty are wonderful, but they are not the same as integrity.”

“Truth means being honest about one’s wretched moral condition. Integrity means trying to fix one’s wretched moral condition.”

Carter, who has been married for 15 years, met his wife, Enola Aird, when they were classmates at Yale Law School. He has dedicated several of his books to her and refers to her almost as often as his children, to illustrate his ideas. “My wife’s fondest saying is, ‘The world has enough smart adults--we need more good adults.’ ”

Trying to help that cause starts at home for Carter. Clearly he has built his definition of integrity from the components of his own life. A good adult must be a good parent, he believes. “A person of integrity says to his boss, ‘I can’t work late tonight. I promised my daughter I’d be at her school play,’ ” he says. The boss may not be pleased, but that isn’t a reason to break a promise. “We don’t model well to children if we don’t keep promises.”

Family life is also the basis for Carter’s definition of a just society. “Judge the justice of a society by the extent that it helps parents raise good children,” he says. For Americans to take on that challenge would require a national change in attitude. “A deep impression in our society is to be true to yourself, not true to your conscience,” he explains. “We think about what we want, not what is right.”

Conscience is the voice inside that teaches us right from wrong, Carter believes. Our job is to make more time for listening to it, especially when we are deciding hard ethical questions. “Integrity requires moral reflectiveness,” he says. “If you don’t take the time, how do you discern between what is right and wrong?”

He doesn’t push the hot button issues to illustrate his point. Abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and immigration are not explored in this book.

Critics see this as a failing, but Carter says it was his plan. He never lays down the rules of sports, marriage or social justice; he only suggests how to formulate good rules and laws. “I’m less trying to explain how we ought to behave than how to figure out how we ought to behave,” he explains.

His argument that all Americans, including politicians, need to consider issues, then take a position and remain faithful to it, is Carter’s most thought-provoking challenge to readers.

But, the majority of Americans have probably never learned how to practice discernment. Carter explains the basics: “It requires that we take the time to ponder, and discuss with friends, and be open to changing our mind,” he says. “In my case, I also discern moral questions through prayer. Others might think things through while they jog.”

Where do we begin? “Turn off the TV, sit on the front steps and talk to the neighbors,” he suggests. “From those conversations we can build a moral civic life.”

At the moment, that too is crumbling, he observes. “Civic life is the place where people broker with government. Without it they feel they have no power. And they are correct.”

History shows that Americans share a core set of values. Among them Carter lists family, generosity and the courage of our convictions. If we can’t manage to hold conversations about these values, he argues, we can’t expect them to survive.

“The core values that America stands for are in jeopardy because of our reluctance to talk about them. We’ve reached the position where we think if we express our belief in these things we’ll infringe on the rights of others.”

A baby boomer himself, he is not afraid to blame his generation for some of the nation’s troubles.

“Our generation is so suspicious of authority [that] we act as if all authority is bad,” he says. “That means moral authority is bad. But if you can’t have moral authority, you can’t have a society.”

Put another way: “If we’re reluctant to make moral judgments, then we should be reluctant to make laws.”

Imagine how a lawyer likes the idea of a world with no more laws.