Walter Berns, political scientist and philosopher, dies at 95
Walter Berns, a political scientist and philosopher who rebuked liberalism with an impassioned conservative view of American democracy, constitutional government and patriotism, died Jan. 10 at his home in Bethesda. He was 95.
The cause was pulmonary failure, said his wife, Irene L. Berns.
Dr. Berns was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank in Washington, and a former professor at Georgetown University, where he attained emeritus status in 1994. In 2005, President George W. Bush awarded him the National Humanities Medal, an honor recognizing Dr. Bernss decades as a constitutional scholar.
Part historian, part political scientist and part philosopher, he sprinkled his writings with references to the Bible, Shakespeare, Camus and Lincoln. Much of his work, the legal scholar Jeremy A. Rabkin wrote in an overview of Dr. Bernss career, reflects the classical view that democracy depends on the character of the citizens, so their opinions and beliefs, their personal habits and degree of self-discipline in a word, their virtues will matter to the prospects of democratic government.
Dr. Berns argued against unbounded individual rights and for restrictions on pornography, which he believed eroded self-restraint.
Those who are without shame, he remarked, will be unruly and unrulable; having lost the ability to restrain themselves by obeying the rules they collectively give themselves, they will have to be ruled by others.
During public debates over the morality of capital punishment, he maintained that the United States should continue to impose the death penalty.
If human life is to be held in awe, as it should be, he wrote in an academic journal in 1980, the law forbidding the taking of it must be held in awe, and the only way the law can be made awe inspiring is to entitle it to inflict the penalty of death.
Dr. Bernss books included Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment (1965), The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy (1976), For Capital Punishment (1979), In Defense of Liberal Democracy (1984), Taking the Constitution Seriously (1987) and Democracy and the Constitution (2006).
His 2001 book Making Patriots drew attention, particularly in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that year. Dr. Berns wrote the book not to address academics, he said on PBSs NewsHour program, but to address the general population, especially young people, and give them good reasons why they should love this country, because this country deserves to be loved.
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Walter Berns, political scientist and philosopher, dies at 95