Bill's Bogus Journey

William Bennett and the law of conservation of vice

Okay, William Bennett wasn't the paragon of virtue that his books and lectures implied. So what else is new? The interesting question is not how he could have deceived his many admirers and devotees—hypocrisy among the overtly righteous is hardly a new phenomenon. Rather we should wonder, now that he has abjured his gambling addiction, what vice he will substitute in its place.

For it is a fact, well documented over the ages, that each of us is born with an irreducible need for a certain amount of guilt-inducing activity-let us call it an Individual Vice Quotient (IVQ). This theory was first postulated to me by a long-ago colleague, one Robert Pugh. Mathematician Pugh conjectured that while the magnitude of the IVQ varies from person to person—for some the occasional glass of sherry or the filching of a trinket from the local novelty store will suffice; for others nothing less than a regular gallon of gin and a bag full of designer label garb filched from Saks will assuage the longing—it remains constant throughout most of life.

Over the course of years, a given individual may choose to abandon one forbidden activity, but will inevitably replace it with another. Intertemporal substitution is possible—a lag may occur between the abandonment of one vicious habit and the taking up of another—but the new vice will then be pursued with sufficient vigor to compensate for the period of abstinence. Thus, over time, the quotient will be maintained at a constant level (some evidence of a decline in the later years has been adduced).

Many manifestations of this substitution effect are well known. The reformed alcoholic chain smokes. The reformed smoker overeats. But more subtle replacements are frequently overlooked. For example, an abjurer of both alcohol and tobacco for whom I once worked, turned instead to periodic outbursts of spite and malice, inspiring terror in colleagues and underlings and remorse in the perpetrator. A still subtler source of needed self-reproach is to be found in the prideful smugness exuded by those who, having shed their apparent vices, have taken to rigorous physical exercise or still more rigorous religion (to be followed, in secret, by a few pangs of self-recognized hypocrisy).

Of course, what constitutes a vice is neither uniform among persons nor constant over time—all that is required is that the individual in question experience a frisson of guilt when indulging in it. Practitioners of public rectitude, such as Bennett, thus perform an important but little recognized function in society: the creation of new sources of guilt. And to the extent that these newly defined vices are of little harm to the larger society—smoking, say, or the ingestion of artery-clogging saturated fats—they may contribute to the commonweal by distracting would-be sinners from more pernicious pursuits. Better that the aftermath of enjoyed guilt be confined to the vice seeker than that it be dispersed among his family, friends or the larger population.

This suggests that a society must walk a careful line between two opposing hazards: 1) excessive strictness such that all opportunity to indulge in petty vice is eradicated; 2) excessive permissiveness such that few opportunities are offered for would-be sinners to wallow in the satisfying sense of transgression. How then to indulge "that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin," as Oscar Wilde has described it? If everyone is wearing a safety pin through the nose, what's the thrill? If the forbidden fruit hangs too low, where's the joy in plucking it?

Which brings us back to Bennett. For all the attention lavished on him, the pressing question of his IVQ remains unresolved. Free munchies at the casino have already given him a heart-threatening paunch, so a resort to gluttony would be ill-advised. Any propensity toward alcoholic overindulgence would surely have long ago manifested itself as he reached for the free drinks plied upon big-time slot players. For him, the thrills of pious intolerance toward the less righteous are obviously insufficient. He might take a lesson from President George W. Bush who has traded away the sins of his alcoholic youth for the scornful pride of the man who can do a mile in seven minutes, while parading his religiosity like the proudest Pharisee.

But there's a warning here: Can exercise or even prayer be a durable replacement for the pleasures of the flesh? Bush, of course, can resort to the occasional unprovoked bombing of some Third World nation to release his pent-up desires. But such opportunities are denied even the most exalted among the citizenry. What's left? Fanny pinching? Arson? A bank heist? A little low-level terrorism? The FBI should be on red alert.