DO WE REALLY WANT TO BE A NATION OF PURITANNICAL SNOOPS?

William Bennett's "bad bet" - a.k.a. Clinton's Revenge - has the
schadenfreuders in near glossolalia while posing an interesting
problem for America's theocrats.

Revelations that Bennett, who has made a career of promoting virtue,
has a million-dollar gambling habit is nectar to the left, especially
those who recall Bennett's relentless condemnation of Bill Clinton's
behavior in the White House. What better expunger of those
historically stained times than learning that one of Clinton's public
scolds, who served as Reagan's education secretary and the elder
Bush's drug policy director, was nursing a near-pathological "vice" of
his own.

The religious right is faced with condemning one of its most muscular
water carriers - or taking an uncharacteristic position of
non-judgment. Does Bill Bennett's gambling habit compromise his moral
standing, or is he (unlike others so easily condemned) free to indulge
personal pleasures as he sees fit?

While one could argue that there's a clear difference between
Clinton's and Bennett's respective behaviors - in addition to the fact
that Bennett smokes his cigars - there's a broad sense that Bennett is
getting his deserved spin on the "gotcha" wheel.

Objectively, while he may have been enjoying a legal pastime, the
extent of his gambling, reported in the millions, seems more than the
harmless release he initially claimed. Likewise, his attempts to be
discreet, gambling between midnight and 6 a.m., suggest he may have
considered his avocation, if not a problem, at least something of
which he wasn't proud.

Whether gambling per se qualifies as a vice is for more virtuous
Americans to debate. Playing games of risk doesn't cause a blip on my
radar, in part because I'm not interested, but mostly because I
believe people have a right to be stupid and self-destructive.

As for the alleged social costs of other people's vices, I remain
skeptical. Whatever costs are incurred by people's victimless pursuits
are probably less than whatever bureaucratic solutions we might create
in trying to control human behavior. The drug war, which Bennett
supports, is a good example. We spend far more fighting and
prohibiting drugs, while criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens,
than it would cost to educate and treat the weak and stupid.

Which is to say, I don't agree with everything Bennett, author of "The
Book of Virtues," supports, but I also don't disagree with much of
what he stands for. It's hard to argue against his position that we've
become morally flabby, personally irresponsible, and that we really
ought to try to do better. The fact that he gambles in his free time
with his own money, reports his winnings to the IRS and donates some
to charity, doesn't alter the truth of those observations.

Nor does his "vice" make him a hypocrite, as some chum scavengers have
suggested. Besides which, what's wrong with hypocrisy? Those inclined
to pray each day shouldn't fail to include thanks for hypocrisy,
which, let's face it, is the basis of civilization. We're all
hypocrites, thank goodness.

Hypocrisy, which poet and essayist Matthew Arnold defined as "the
tribute vice pays to virtue," is what gets children grown up and keeps
the rest of us relatively well-behaved and kempt. The trick of course
is to use hypocrisy to instruct rather than to self-justify.

In other words, it's one thing to disagree with state-supported
gambling, as Bennett has, while believing individual gambling is
permissible and, within limits, enjoyable. One does not necessarily
preclude the other. In any case, we can ill afford to demand that
people who speak publicly in favor of moral behavior be morally
perfect themselves. Not only would we perish of boredom, but we'd so
limit the field of political candidates that we might as well skip the
discussion and insert our feeding tubes.

The ironic parable of Bennett's gambling, though perhaps embarrassing
to him, may have emerged at a propitious time, proffering a moral
truth all its own: As we have become morally flabby, we also have
become increasingly tyrannical in our pursuit of people's flaws.

Surely we don't want to be a nation of puritanical snoops who drive
good people away from public service. The higher virtue would be to
end this barbarism that "outs" people's private lives for public
vivisection and consumption. As Bennett-the-gambler has noted
correctly, we can and should do better.