A Spiritual Manifesto
for a New Political Age

Call it soul sickness. Having satisfied many of their material concerns, millions of baby boomers are now asking themselves the Peggy Lee question: Is this all there is? In search of answers, many are flocking to bookstores and pushing books on virtue and religion onto bestseller lists. The most political, and in some ways the most personal, is "The Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul" (Simon & Schuster, 251 pages, $22). Its author is Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, known to artists as a biographer of Maria Callas and Pablo Picasso and in political circles as the outspoken wife of Rep. Michael Huffington, the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in California.

"Two-thirds of the Baby Boom generation dropped out of traditional religious involvement along the way to their mid-life crisis; now 40% are returning." writes Ms. Huffington. Her book tries to explain why so many are seeking spiritual fulfillment, and at the same time to provide the undergirding for a conservative alternative to Hillary Clinton's "Politics of Meaning." Call it the politics of virtue.

"The Fourth Instinct," according to Ms. Huffington, is humankind's "Clear disposition toward goodness, compassion and human fellowship." It is most keenly felt after the three basic instincts are satisfied: survival, the drive toward self-assertion and power, and the sexual urge. She makes passionate, if not always convincing, arguments that the narcissism and lack of purpose that now drive so many people will be replaced by "a practical spirituality that transforms our everyday life." Her analysis of why the Fourth Instinct is about to take hold will charm many baby boomers, but her relentless optimism will be a bit much for some readers. It's almost as if Norman Vincent Peale met Newt Gingrich and they decided to co-author a book.

But despite its occasional quirkiness, "The Fourth Instinct" is a useful discussion of why Americans are rediscovering the importance of character and the need to improve its content.

Ms. Huffington is an immigrant from Greece and obviously loves her adopted country. Her discussion of the importance of community in American life updates observations first made by Tocqueville. After the Los Angeles earthquake she was struck by how far America has diverged from Tocqueville's time: "Thousands of forlorn, atomized individuals did nothing but wait for a centralized savior, the federal government. America has been diminished by a system of compulsory compassion that simply wants true communities out of the way so that altruism can be left to the experts." She asks what America would be like if once again leadership consisted not merely of pumping more tax dollars out of Washington, but inspiring individuals to walk out of their doors and take action.

Ms. Huffington says that today we live in close proximity to each other, but too seldom live together as neighbors making our communities work. We've allowed the state of replace the bonds and affiliations individuals used to maintain, and we are the poorer for the trade in many ways.

Her hope is that all this may soon change as a collapse of faith in big government prompts Americans to once again see themselves as the most effective agent of social change. The Chronicle of Philanthropy notes that every year more than 80 million Americans volunteer nearly one billion hours of their time to charitable activities. she believes that if Americans can set their creative spirits free, they can "do for community what self-interest did for Adam Smith's capitalism. It is time to lift the other invisible hand."

Although predicting a coming revolution of volunteerism born out of an inner calling to altruism will strike many as for-fetched, Ms. Huffington is certainly correct that there are forces moving in her direction. Czech president Vaclav Havel has inspired millions with his calls for spiritual regeneration, most recently of July 4 in Philadelphia. Study groups have formed all over America to discuss Bill Bennett's bestselling "The Book of Virtues." Many Americans who would never thump a Bible are discovering that faith has a central place in their lives. Political leaders praise America's "civic religion," that bundle of beliefs, symbols and rituals that have long inspired Americans to think of themselves as a unique people with an obligation to set a special example for the world.

It is striking that both Hillary Clinton and Arianna Huffington sometimes speak the same language of moral renewal. They would, of course, disagree about the directions that their respective political dialects would take the country. The first lady would see Ms. Huffington's call for volunteerism as a call for cutting back on collective action against poverty and ushering in a return to the greedy 80's. Ms. Huffington thinks Hillary Clinton's "politics of meaning" is only an excuse for building an even more meddlesome and suffocating state. However, they would probably agree that the politics of moral emptiness that has characterized so much of the national debate in recent years is about to be supplanted by one or the other of their visions.

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