Michael Novak Crafted a Moral Defense of Democratic Capitalism

By James R. Hagerty

Originally published on February 24, 2017 on The Wall Street Journal

Philosopher served as ambassador under Reagan and impressed Thatcher

In 1960, at age 26, Michael Novak moved into a Manhattan apartment swarming with cockroaches. After 12 years of preparing for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he had abandoned that mission and would devote himself to writing—about exactly what, he wasn’t sure.

He realized, as he noted later, “there was no way to know how deep my talent ran.”

It ran deep enough for him to write more than 50 books, including the acclaimed “Spirit of Democratic Capitalism,” a 1982 work that made a moral case for capitalism. His writings led to an appointment by President Ronald Reagan as ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and to friendships with Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. More celebrated abroad than at home, he won medals from the governments of Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland.

A theologian and philosopher, he gradually turned away from a youthful flirtation with leftism to champion entrepreneurs with the zeal of the converted. Though democratic capitalism had its flaws, “all other known systems of political economy are worse,” he wrote in his 1982 paean to the profit motive. “Such hope as we have for alleviating poverty and for removing oppressive tyranny…lies in this much despised system.”

Mr. Novak died Feb. 17 of colon cancer at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 83.

Michael Novak was born Sept. 9, 1933, into a family of Slovak immigrants in the industrial town of Johnstown, Pa. His father was an insurance salesman who had dropped out of school as a teenager but prized a set of Harvard classics.

At age 14, young Michael moved to Indiana to attend a high school seminary at Notre Dame. Later he earned a philosophy degree at Stonehill College and continued his theological studies in Rome and Washington before taking up writing in 1960. His first novel, “The Tiber Was Silver,” featured a young man struggling about whether to enter the priesthood.

He then studied philosophy at Harvard University, where he eventually received a master’s degree. His philosophical heroes included Reinhold Niebuhr, Gabriel Marcel and Albert Camus. While at Harvard, he met his future wife, a painter and printmaker, Karen Laub. He knew immediately he wanted to marry her, he recalled in a memoir; she needed a year “until she reached a similar certainty.”

Among the things they shared, he found, was that “we always expected the worst—but then were delighted by the little things that turned out beautifully.”

Recruited to teach at Stanford University in the mid-1960s, he joined protests against the Vietnam War, though he wavered over the years on whether U.S. involvement was justified. “I came out of it feeling that I had not been as steady in my thinking as I would have liked,” he wrote.

His magazine articles and books brought him to the attention of politicians. He supported Eugene McCarthy’s unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 but also agreed to advise rival Robert Kennedy on courting youthful voters.

He tried teaching at the experimental State University of New York at Old Westbury, but found campus life there was “just crazy, rebellious and anarchic.” So he took up a chance to write speeches for Sargent Shriver as the politician stumped for Democrats across the U.S. in 1970.

Mr. Novak found Mr. Shriver “almost saintly” and admired George McGovern, the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president in 1972. Yet he believed the party was neglecting a large part of its base, including Irish, Italian and Slavic Catholic immigrants.

Such voters, he wrote, “did not want their kids taking acid. They did not want their daughters sleeping around, or having abortions.”

His 1972 book “The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics” described people who would become Reagan Democrats, as Mr. Novak himself became.

By 1976, he was ready to identify as a capitalist and conservative. In an article entitled “A Closet Capitalist Confesses,” he wrote that socialism was “the residue of Judeo-Christian faith, without religion. It is a belief in the goodness of the human race and paradise on earth.” Capitalism, he added, was “a system built on belief in human selfishness; given checks and balances, it is nearly always a smashing, scandalous success.”

In 1978, he accepted a job offer from the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. He drew economic ideas from Irving Kristol, Jude Wanniski and Jack Kemp. Mr. Novak, who wrote for The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion pages and many other publications, retired from the AEI in 2009 and took a teaching post at Ave Maria University in Florida.

He wasn’t an absolutist. “Governments can sometimes harness state powers in order to do good,” he wrote. He also acknowledged that he could be wrong: “The important thing is to have the courage to follow your intellect.”

In his book “No One Sees God,” he recalled having “spent long years in the dark and windswept open spaces between unbelief and belief.”

When he wasn’t writing or lecturing, he was likely to be looking for a basketball or football game to watch. In his book “The Joy of Sports,” he dismissed the idea that sports were a waste of an intellectual’s time. “The basic reality of all human life is play, games, sport; these are the realities from which the basic metaphors for all that is important in the rest of life are drawn,” he wrote.

In the evening, he enjoyed drinking a Manhattan, and regularly coached bartenders on the right portions of Bourbon, sweet vermouth and maraschino cherry juice. At one of his favorite pubs, the staff kept a laminated sheet with his instructions.

Mr. Novak is survived by a brother and a sister, three children and four grandchildren. His wife, Karen, died in 2009.