Truth and the Demands of Loyalty: A Review of the Film "Nothing but the Truth"

By Glenn A. Davis

“I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” As Thomas Fleming points out in his book, The Morality of Everyday Life (2004), when E. M. Forster made this statement, he was defending rooted loyalties over abstract political doctrine.

Acts of betrayal and their concomitant demands of allegiance are at the center of the movie, Nothing but the Truth (2008), which is loosely based on the Valerie Plame affair from 2003. The story opens with a failed assassination attempt on the President of the United States, an attempt which appears to have been orchestrated from Venezuela. After a brief investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency, the President initiates a war against that South American nation. Unfortunately, one CIA investigator, Erica Van Doren (played by Vera Farmiga), has reached a different conclusion and has written a report that absolves Venezuela of any guilt. This report is ignored by the White House, but is soon discovered by our hero in the movie, Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale), a reporter for the Capital Sun-Times who uses her column to “out” Erica Van Doren as a spy intimately involved in the Venezuela affair.

As is wont to happen, upon the publication of the story, the proverbial stuff hits the fan, a special prosecutor is appointed (Patton Dubois played by Matt Dillon) and our journalist is hauled before a grand jury and ordered to give up her source. Refusing to do so, our Vassar and Columbia J School educated hero is cited for contempt of court and is thrown in jail where Judge Hall (played by real life attorney, Floyd Abrams) and the Supreme Court intend to keep her unless and until she reveals the name of the traitor.

Nothing But the Truth is a well played, honest effort to flesh out First Amendment issues in a dangerous world of often divided loyalties. What is most striking about the film, especially throughout the first half, is the sincerity and balance of the various factions who all have much at stake in this political and legal battle. Armstrong is a committed reporter, who, given this first big break, aggressively pursues this story and demonstrates the mental and physical toughness needed to report on a great government malefaction. Van Doren, unwillingly thrust into the spotlight, skillfully plays defense, dealing with the inherent distrust of her spooked colleagues, who are never convinced of her innocence, even though she has a blemish-free record and perfectly passes a lie-detector test. Patton Dubois comes across as an equally committed defender of justice who, with a feigned folksy demeanor, is fighting to maintain the integrity of national security. The only character who does not make a presentable and sympathetic case for himself is Armstrong’s attorney, the revered Albert Burnside (played by Alan Alda, who seemed more distinguished and dignified in Michael Moore’s spoof Canadian Bacon), to whom even Dubois genuflects, only to realize that Burnside is much more concerned with the tailoring of suits and the design of luxury wristwatches than with defending his client. While seeking a continuance in the initial hearing, Burnside proves woefully out maneuvered and Ms. Armstrong is immediately jailed.

Where has the Reader of Conservative Classics Gone?

I often reserve my Sunday afternoons for trips to the local university library. These visits are bittersweet, for although I live in an area of the country which is considered to be "very conservative" and is very Republican (the Democratic Party often does not field a complete list of candidates in an election), I rarely have any trouble finding available in the stacks works by and about the major conservative writers whom I esteem. Am I truly the only reader of Kirk, Weaver, and Voegelin in a town with a university of 30,000 students?

Today was a typical jaunt which led me to the stacks on a quest to find the following works: The Counter-Revolution by Thomas Molnar, Paul Elmer More and American Criticism by Robert Shafer, Democracy and Populism by John Lukacs, and Democracy without Nations? by Pierre Manent. Lucky for me, I had absolutely no problem in acquiring these works as they were neatly situated on the shelves. "Neatly" is key here, for this library is not one of the better organized ones that I have frequented. If a book is easily found, it has probably not been borrowed for a long time. Sure enough, after finding each work, I opened the front covers and found the following dates for the most recent readings: the More book was last borrowed in January, 1968; Molnar had one perusal in January, 1974; I am the first to borrow the Manent book (published 2007). But the Lukacs book was borrowed in April, 2006 (I am pretty sure that I was the previous borrower).

So what does this say about conservatives and conservatism? How is the conservative imagination to be enlivened if, as I believe, self-described conservatives limit themselves to...to what? Fox News? Sean Hannity? Mornings on the Mall with Glenn Beck? Lunch with Limbaugh? Sure, this is only one man's experience in the great American Outback, but didn't Professor Carey hit the proverbial nail on the head when, writing in 2005 about the future of American conservatism, he recognized that the leadership of the Republican Party showed little interest in the roots and traditions of conservatism and that "the Republican Party has, so to speak, changed its spots virtually without attracting much critical attention"? And that George W. Bush's "aggressive foreign policy, perhaps best described as Wilsonianism on steroids, has its roots in the traditions of the Democratic Party and clearly runs counter to well-established conservative principles" [Modern Age, Vol. 47, pp. 292-293]? How do we keep alive the great tradition when our leadership has vacated our heritage?

Many years ago, in graduate school, I overheard someone assert that one difference between the two major political parties was that Republicans did not read books, and Democrats read the wrong books. Browsing the shelves of university and public libraries has not disabused me of that assertion. What is a force for optimism, however, is the fact that our literary heritage is still available (Dr. Kirk once wrote, "in and age of progressive inflation, one commodity alone remains stable, or increases little in price: classical works"), and is being kept alive through blogs like this, through independent educational centers (thank you, Barbara and Winston), and at select schools and universities. We are few, a happy few, but we have our work cut out for us.

Irving Babbitt, the Moral Imagination, and Progressive Education by Glenn A. Davis

Below is an excerpt from TIC contributor Glenn Davis' excellent essay in the 2006 issue of Humanitas. In this piece Davis gives us an introduction to the thinking of Irving Babbitt, an exemplar of Imaginative Conservatism.

Irving Babbitt, the Moral Imagination, and Progressive Education

When Literature and the American College, Irving Babbitt’s critique of the new educational theories, was first published in 1908, it was a shot fired across the bow of the ship of progressive reform in American higher education. Babbitt fired a sound shot, but he lost the war. Since that time, educational reform has run through various movements, including, but not limited to, the industrial education movement, the mental testing movement, differentiated curriculum, child-centered education, the mental hygiene movement, the efficiency movement, constructivism, and education for life-adjustment, all reform movements advanced under the rubric of “progressive education.” Yet, readers who review educational practice and who delve into the voluminous works on educational theory over the past century, will recognize that Babbitt’s writings on education as an ethical pursuit remain topical. Now more than ever, Americans argue the purpose and value of education and debate the central issues of educational content and methodology, as Babbitt did one hundred years ago.

Babbitt’s voice should continue to be heard in the public debate because his central concern was with that timeless question raised by the Greeks and most explicitly put forth by Christ: For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Matt. 16:26). The purpose of education, Babbitt emphatically answered the reformers, was not to train to acquire wealth and power, but rather, in the time-honored tradition of humanistic studies, to teach to assimilate the wisdom of the ages, an assimilation that could be fostered primarily through the right use of the imagination. Wisdom and virtue, not wealth and power, lead us to fulfill our deepest human need, genuine communion with others. Babbitt’s concern for right judgment and community as the product of imaginative understanding has much to say to our world and indeed has much to offer educators who have refocused in recent years on the need for community building.

Babbitt’s thesis throughout his works is that the educational reforms of the early twentieth century inadequately addressed the nature of human imagination and therefore distorted our under- standing of the human endeavor. Under largely utilitarian reforms, schooling was seriously undermining the human community because it was distorting the key element in learning: the imagination. According to Babbitt, if healthy community, defined in part as the corporate embodiment of past wisdom, was to grow, schooling had to play a significant role. And schooling means developing the moral imagination. In order for any educational institution to succeed in its purpose of assimilating wisdom, it must first and foremost foster vibrant imaginative qualities of its students, and imagination is the tool used to pursue the common standards inherent in wisdom.

Read the complete essay by Glenn Davis

The Domestic Consequences of Foreign Wars

There is no quicker way to get the blood up than to question the integrity of our nation's war policies. Yet, on the political right, it used to be respectable, without being narrowly isolationist or pacifist, to examine and challenge the wisdom of military engagement, especially abroad. We need mention just a few names to remember that we have a wealth of tradition of healthy skepticism. Babbitt, More, Nock, Kirk, Weaver, Taft were quite eloquent with their positions, and, as Professor Carey mentioned in his post, Robert Nisbet was one of the most important voices to proffer a "scathing indictment of our interventionist policies." His criticism of warfare is of consequence largely because he foresaw as a sociologist the domestic pressures that foreign wars excite.

An active soldier in World War II, Nisbet openly recognized that warfare was an exceptionally appealing enterprise, that it was an intense force for the manifestation of those very qualities that we expect in our leadership class (valor, heroism, courage, and sacrifice), and that through shared purpose, our nation could meet one of the most basic needs of all, the need of people to come together to ensure survival. Warfare is community-building, it creates opportunity, and stimulates social, political, and economic fluidity. As he wrote in The Twilight of Authority,

"One of war's greatest functions is giving a sense of community to those on each side...At a stroke, the ordinary factionalisms, the gnawing conflicts and competitions of the marketplace, and the ideological divisions of politics become muted, even dissolved. In their place is the kind of moral and social and political community that war can bring to a population which feels it is engaged upon some kind of mission or crusade...The effect of war can be, and has been, to endow with welcome meaning or purpose activities that all too easily come in ordinary times to seem lacking in either."

But while recognizing the positive, community-building aspects of war, Nisbet increasingly feared the powerful wartime forces that would guarantee to "break the cake of custom, the net of tradition," rend the great work of time (in our case, the Republic), in favor of mass centralization of power and lead directly to the weakening of those little platoons that nurture and sustain the human spirit. As he argued in The Present Age, "Military, or at lease war-born, relationships among individuals tend to supersede relationships of family, parish, and ordinary walks of life." So omnipotent can these relationships be that Nisbet declared that our first experience with totalitarianism came during World War I under President Wilson. "The tragedy of contemporary warfare," he wrote in The Quest for Community, "is not that its efficiency has become progressively destructive, but rather that the stifling regimentation and bureaucratic centralization of military organization is becoming more and more the model of associative and leadership relationships in time of peace and in nonmilitary organizations."

So the question is not whether or not we are to engage an enemy when attacked (which seems to be clear among our readers), but, as Winston has pointed out, are we going to transform the battle of survival into a moral and political crusade, into "nation-building"? And what effect will perpetual war have on American political society? Historians, like Nisbet, have clearly pointed out the revolutionary effects WWI and WWII had on the growth of the executive branch of government, but what can we say about the effects that more recent wars, e.g., the Cold War, the wars in Korea, Vietnam , Iraq, and Afghanistan, have had on our social institutions as well? Think of the vast changes in our thinking about the kinship society, the civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights, the growth in instruments of national security, and our educational institutions, curricula, and policies. Some change has been for the good, some not so good. But for those of us who call ourselves conservative, it is imperative that we continue to examine and question the actions of Leviathan.

Gather Round the Hearth to Enjoy Things

Imaginative conservatives in the school of Kirk take long views, and, as Dr. Kirk often reminded us, religion and ethics trump politics. Nevertheless, it is easy to understand why many of us grieve the passing of the old Republic. As John Randolph defined it - and where Dr. Kirk began his foray into historical scholarship - republican principles meant "love of peace, hatred of offensive war; jealousy of the State Governments towards the General Government, and the influence of the Executive Government over the co-ordinate branches of that Government; a dread of standing armies; a loathing of public debt, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, Argus-eyed jealousy, of the patronage of the President...."

Our pessimism begins with the realization that very few of our neighbors subscribe to such views today, maybe excepting the "loathing of public debt, taxes, and excises." As Professors Frohnen and Birzer state, with the Louisiana Purchase, the original republican himself, Jefferson politically succumbed to the impulse to expand the nation and inflate the desires of a restless people. The modern American identity has become synonymous with expansion, with inflationary expectations, where a wise understanding of limitation, or "inner-check", has become anathema. Richard Weaver called this "the spoiled-child psychology," the belief of the mass man that "there is nothing that he cannot know...and there is nothing that he cannot have." In this decadent world, order is not transcendent, it is not the result of the great work of time, but is rather the ephemeral result of the consumption faculty. "We have given them a technique of acquisition," wrote Weaver, "how much comfort can we take in the way they employ it?"

As conservatives - as teachers - we must stand with the philosophers and the theologians against the sophists and keep asking, "to what end?" Kirk urged us to look deeper than politics, to take long views, to seek out clearer distinctions, and to flesh out a deeper understanding.

How do we redeem the time? As everyone on the blog has affirmed, we start by "brightening the corner where we are," by improving ourselves, by helping our neighbors, by loving our families, by setting high standards for our students, and by exercising the inherited liberty bequeathed to us from the founders, responsibly, yet joyfully. "Freedom is something that gathers around the hearth, inheres in local associations, and endears to a man his place of habitation. It was a protection to enable him to enjoy things, not a force or power to enable him to do things," wrote Weaver. And always reflect upon and advocate the permanent things.