Karl Rove versus Protagoras

June 20, 2004

In his recent commencement address to the graduating students at Liberty University in Virginia, Karl Rove misinterpreted the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras. Protagoras lectured that people became good citizens not by obedience to authority but by learning what is just and right, that people were dependent on what they learned and on their own will. This is what Protagoras meant when he claimed that "man is the measure of all things." It is clear that Rove and Protagoras see the world differently, but Protagoras was not, as Rove described him, advocating that people do whatever they pleased because "man is the measure of all things." Rove announced that following Protagoras has given the world the deeds of Hitler and Stalin. Protagoras was saying that people had to learn right and had to apply their will to do right. Everybody acts according to his own fix on reality. This applies to those who worship God. Those who have aligned themselves with God's authority have been unable to escape this, from Spain's Torquemada to Osama ben Laden and everyone in between. As Protagoras claimed, rather than obedience to authority, or just following orders, for the sake of right and justice people have to think.

Using Stalin and Hitler as examples of evil and suggesting that they were evil because of their distance from God, as Rove and others do, ignores other explanations for the evil of these two men. Some would say that the source of their evil was the absolute power they had acquired. I would blame power mixed with a desire to engineer society to perfection. Stalin to his death believed in his socialist revolution and was ready to exterminate people deemed enemies of that revolution. Hitler had a passion for a Europe dominated by Germany and without Jews. John Calvin had people burned at the stake because he also wanted perfection.