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Plastic Sinners, Plastic Sins
From King David to St. Augustine, Christian tradition affirms the value of bold, strong sins. But the culture of porn has given us the simpering, self-justifying, and machine-like sins of Bill Bennett and Bill Clinton.

Last year, following the revelation that William Bennett—America's Jiminy Cricket—had squandered millions of dollars gambling in casinos, there was a renewed wave of hand-wringing over the state of public virtue. First Clinton's peccadilloes and now Bennett. Some on the right despaired while many on the left gleefully recorded further proof of their theory that "everybody does it." Both sides seemed to concede the underlying fact: we just can't be good.

To me, this is an unremarkable truth, something we have known about ourselves for a very long time. Instead of being surprised to learn from these public failures that we haven't yet figured out how to be good, we ought to ask ourselves why it is we so easily forget this fact. This forgetting, after all, is the more recent development, not the fact of vice. A closer look at the manner in which both Bennett and Clinton acted can, I think, provide an answer to this more important question.

Plastic Sinners

The virtuous vices are virtuous because they carry within them the seed of redemption.
More troubling to me than the fact that the author of The Book of Virtues participated heavily in an industry that exploits a lack of virtue was the way Bennett pursued his habit. Somehow, the image of a robotic Bennett dropping $500 chips into a slot machine at 3 a.m. seemed far less forgivable than the image I would have preferred: that of Bennett, cigar planted firmly in the corner of his mouth, sweating under the dim lights of a high-stakes poker game, or indulging in the glitz of a high-rolling craps game, or holding onto his hat while he urged his horse on at the racetrack. Similarly, why does the image of John F. Kennedy seducing Marilyn Monroe into a full-fledged affair conducted in exotic locations bother me so much less than that of President Clinton convincing his intern to service him in a hallway outside the Oval Office?

Most commentators have made the mistake of wondering whether the Bennett and Clinton (and other) episodes mark the disappearance of virtue. Rather, we ought to wonder whether we are losing something just as important to a healthy society: the existence of "virtuous vice." The practitioners of virtuous vice are more forgivable because their sins are human sins, pursued with human passions. They approach life with the attitude of "real vice or no vice at all." As such, their vices remain on a human scale. Retaining a high level of skill and daring, these sinners celebrate their humanity by consciously risking annihilation. The virtuous vices are virtuous because they carry within them the seed of redemption: a recognition of the truth that human beings are not merely materialistic beings, not just a collection of elements, but spiritual beings capable of a meaningful annihilation. In George Santayana's memorable phrase, those who practice virtuous vice are "moral, though fugitive." As G.K. Chesterton put it, "they accept the essential idea of man; they merely seek it wrongly."

Bennett at his slots and Clinton in his hallway leave us cold precisely because by pursuing the pay-off with nothing but mechanical efficiency, they have dehumanized vice. The real lesson to be learned here is that playing slot machines is the gambling equivalent of receiving oral sex from an office intern. Both of these acts represent within our culture the corrosive effect of modernity; both acts bear the unmistakable marks of pornography....

...Both Bennett and Clinton have demonstrated publicly where we are at in the process of pornifying sin. Clinton pursued oral sex in a hallway to avoid the risk of annihilation inherent in actually "having sex" with his "lover." Bennett stayed away from the card tables because he didn't like to be recognized when gambling. Both men sought the material benefit of vice while at the same time calculating and measuring its cost in ways that denied the virtue of the vice. As a result, both men reduced themselves in some measure to the level of machines. Both were being "serviced" in mechanical ways. They are just two more in a long line of people victimized and self-victimized by pornography's tendency to reduce human passion to its most consumable, mechanistic parts and then offer up those parts as efficiently, ubiquitously, and cheaply as possible. Slot machines and furtive oral sex leave the human scale behind in preference for a mechanical scale. And importantly, these sins are less forgivable because they are less human....

...There is a long Christian tradition affirming the value to society of bold, strong sins. From King David to Saint Augustine, our knowledge of grace has been fortified by our knowledge of depravity. Martin Luther understood this when he wrote in a letter to Philip Melanchthon, "Be a sinner, and sin boldly." Luther spoke in contrast to those who disgusted him by finding "excuses for their sins" and by "justify[ing] themselves."

We need virtuous vice and bold sinners. Such vice affirms our humanity and tends to either burn a person up, or burn him into a saint. Outbreaks are violent and ugly, but can usually be contained. The culture of porn, on the other hand, operates like a deadly but patient virus: it lurks in the blood and succeeds by maintaining in its host the illusion of health. It creates simpering, self-justifying, and machine-like sins; outbreaks are prettified, and devastation seeps into society like a water into a sponge, mostly unnoticed.

Vice will always be with us. It is a fact those concerned with the future of virtue ought to remember. But better that it be rare, exotic, and expensive than common, pedestrian, and cheap. We need sins that affirm us as spiritual beings in all of our fallenness. Therefore sinner, sin boldly, but, as Luther also admonished, pray boldly too. For you are human after all.