It’s always illuminating to read a Left-liberal trying to explain conservatives, though not in ways the Leftist intends. Recently, NYTimes columnist Nicholas Kristof took a stab at it.
Conservatives may not like liberals, but they seem to understand them. In contrast, many liberals find conservative voters not just wrong but also bewildering. […]
Now a fascinating new book comes along that, to a liberal like myself, helps demystify the right — and illuminates the kind of messaging that might connect with voters of all stripes. “The Righteous Mind,” by Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia psychology professor, argues that, for liberals, morality is largely a matter of three values: caring for the weak, fairness and liberty. Conservatives share those concerns (although they think of fairness and liberty differently) and add three others: loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity. […]
This year’s Republican primaries have been a kaleidoscope of loyalty, authority and sanctity issues — such as whether church-affiliated institutions can refuse to cover birth control in health insurance policies — and that’s perhaps why people like me have found the primaries so crazy.
Another way of putting it is this: Americans speak about values in six languages, from care to sanctity. Conservatives speak all six, but liberals are fluent in only three. And some (me included) mostly use just one, care for victims.
Kristof goes on to write about how conservative ideology springs more from “ick” factors than any kind of intellectual exercise.
Yet no where in his piece is self-reflection that his one I see victims “moral language,” may not only be borne of sheer emotionalism but its extremely narrow POV makes it a hammer where not only are all issues nails to be pounded, but some of those nails may be actual people, too.
Consider that if one sees “victims” all around, then there must be victimizers that need be reined in and punished.
e.g. Much of the viciousness being directed against those opposed to Obama and the Democrats’ push for an omnipotent Central Government is “victim” driven. Case in point, the deranged histrionics of Robert Shrum
Now comes the historic decision on health reform — which could reach far beyond the case to fray the whole fabric of progress in modern America. To overturn the individual mandate, to throw out all or most of the rest of the law, would be an act of naked judicial activism, which conservatives profess to despise. In truth, though, they practice it vigorously, in barely concealed disguise, when it advances their own ends. Depending on the “reasoning” rationalized by five horsemen of the judicial right, they could jeopardize other basic protections — for example, the prohibition against segregation at distinctly local enterprises like lunch counters, a prohibition that depends on a generous and long-prevailing view of federal regulation of interstate commerce. […]
But those Tea Party protesters outside may be matched by a Tea Party Supreme Court inside. And such a court is almost certainly the only means to the destruction of health reform. […]
Largely missing from the coverage of the health reform case are the most important consequences of nullifying the law: The tragedy of tens of millions who would again be left without insurance; the plight of young adults now on their parents’ policies who would be thrown off; the desperation of those with pre-existing conditions who would be left with no coverage and nowhere to turn; the agony of patients who, because of lifetime limits on their insurance, would see it canceled just before the next round of chemotherapy.
It took a hundred years to remedy all of this by passing health reform; it could take decades to pass it again if and after a changed Supreme Court reversed an ideologically driven denial of health care as a fundamental human right and not just another product in the market place.
Shrum’s basic disconnect from American principles of liberty and free agency is of Kristof’s singular moral language. It doesn’t matter that ObamaCare upends the Constitution as a document that limits the power of the Federal government, or that the labor of the young and even the unborn will be largely consigned to Government redistribution, or even that doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other ‘healthcare workers’ have been declared a natural resource by Leftist fiat and their liberty to engage in the marketplace, like a plumber or grocer, has been obliterated — OH NOES! THINK OF THE VICTIMS!!!
In an exchange on Twitter, one young female sneered at me that her taxes and insurance premiums had “paid for your births” (somehow obligating me to SHUTUP about the 1st amendment and birth control). I told her that, no, when my husband and I had our kids, medical insurance was for catastrophic events and that a normal birth was paid for out-of-pocket. (IIRC that was $1500 in 1978)
Her response was “I didn’t realize you were so ancient.”
Sadly, the Constitution is over 100 years old and American principles of adult responsibility have become just as ancient. Those of us that refuse the moral bankruptcy of identifying as the perpetual victim crying gimme gimme gimme find ourselves scapegoated as The Villain.
It is the age of The Victim … all power to its champion, Nannystatism.
Darleen, I’m pretty sure her reply was intended to indicate that you could be ignored as senile while she waited for you to die.
SDN
I’m sure there was quite a bit of ageism involved. Old Lefties are be to admired, but inauthentic old womens should be put on an ice floe and pushed out to sea.
In other words, Kristof, you make that supremely arrogant and not a little sanctimonious assumption — giving you the benefit of the doubt you haven’t earned — that socialism works.
Given the oceans of failure leftism evidences across all of its now-broken and bankrupt programs, that assumption is, at the very least, ignorant. More realistically it’s profoundly arrogant and frankly, a lie.
A lie trailing victims. Care much?
And all this before we even go to that place where the original structural principles stand ground because we simply don’t need to waste time arguing against such specious claims and holy demands that flow so mindlessly from your rank dishonesty.
So blow me, Kristof. And if you think that rude, crass, vulgar, or intolerant, consider how I see your leftist State and the countless lives it’s touched so negatively. Before we even get to the place where we talk seriously about the philosophy of liberty, for it is indeed a philosophy.
Coerced theft in service of a privileged few as a philosophy? Not so much. And you know it.
I suggest you put up the goods, Nick, and stop talking out your ass about care. Liar.
“The tragedy of tens of millions . . . ”
Oh how the language has been corrupted.
Liar.
Liar.
Liar.
Prove it.
In sum, one of the weaker arguments I’ve seen in service of collectivism.
Well past time to drag it back to to philosophical hole it came from and bury it there.
Better. And, yes. That.
Steven Hayward mentions: “Keep in mind that Kennedy was the author of the majority opinion in Citizens United, the case the Left is still going bonkers over, comparing it to Dred Scott and other absurdities.”
Recall Obama’s direct insult to the Court over Citizens United during his 2010 State of the Union address. Think now of the self-indulgent immaturity required to fling the insult at the cost of even the tiniest support at a later turn, like say, come the question of the constitutionality of a piece of major health care legislation.
There’s an argument that courts behave in an activist manner when they strike down laws passed by the legislative branch; that instead courts ought to show restraint in recognition that the legislative branch is representative of the popular will, and the People have the right to be governed by laws of their own devising/choosing.
Of course Obamacare can hardly be said to be popular, or even devised by the People’s representatives given the manner in which it was passed.
And nobody’s ever argued that judicial restraint requires deference to the Legislative, particularly with something as egregious as ObamaCare.
One of the biggest problems is that the left defines “victims” so as to include people who have damaged themselves. Spent your high school years on drugs? You’re a “victim”. Preferred causing problems to learning? “Victim”. Borrowed more money than you can repay? “Victim”. Can’t resist violent impulses and end up in prison or dead? “Victim”.
The BIGGEST problem is that having identified “victims” the left then goes hunting for the “victimizers”. Object to schools spending more and more money for less and less outcome? Your “greed” is the reason Johnny can’t read. Managed your money wisely? You’re the reason so many people are out of their homes. Object to being attacked by thugs in the street? You’re the real criminal!
Crawford,
I read some leftist loon not long ago who characterized Paul Ryan as “granny-starver”
and was SERIOUS about the charge.
It’s like that sign “no matter what this sign says, you’ll say it’s racist” .. no matter what criticism you have of Nannystatism, you are FOR “dirty water, dirty air, tainted food, global warming, starving children, killing seniors … yadda yadda yadda.”
Isn’t that the queer thing for such as us to attempt to grasp Darleen, that such “arguments” be taken by the flinger as somehow “persuasive” or at least as a means to acquire what the flinger thinks necessary?
Ah. So it’t not about caring for victims, then. Rather it’s about the sanctimonious self-regard that comes from seeing and being seen as a caring carer who cares (more than you), solely by virtue of the fact that you speak the language of caring
with eloquence, no doubt.
I see…
…
London…
Interesting that “caring for the weak” changed to “caring for victims”.
I think it needs to be pointed out though, “caring” as used there doesn’t mean the active act of actually taking care of victims, but rather the emotional expression of sympathy. As in; conservatives don’t care about dirty air and clean water and starving people and all the rest.
That’s why the results of their policies don’t matter, it’s the self affirming intentions that are important. When it comes time to actually help the weak, the goal isn’t really to strengthen the weak, but to express their own “caring”, unconcerned that they are subsidizing weakness, not helping it.
what about France?
Oh, shoulda refreshed…
It’s even stranger than that to me Ernst. The generalized problem is to attain justice, let’s say. Yet these seekers of the attainment of justice from the left begin their quest with an act of injustice. They care to not care about doing their interlocutors one little whit of justice. So little are they in possession of the thing they appear to seek to do, they cannot tell that they’re violating it to start their quest. So we end up wondering (maybe say concluding, rather) as to the sincerity of their claim to the search at all, yet only by the proof received from their own hands.
To be dispensed by a sole agency of his approval, yours and my and the other company’s and the corporation over there and the church down the street and the medical group that never existed because of the onerous regulations and the board of volunteers wanting to be in benevolent medicine notwithstanding.
No, surely none of us care.
Because we are unable to pull it off, having done so for 200 years to the point that it can all now be coercively stolen from us. Or probably, because we’d never do it out of the goodness of our hearts such that the communist has to first filter it all through the same State that also makes war.
In other words caring is the function of, in the rarified view of a communist columnist writing from an NYC enclave, a single state agency with the other power to misrepresent individual interests, rights, properties, and lives throughout history such that an entire structure was built deliberately and expressly to prevent it doing it again this time.
Or, as this same mental twit and moral trollop would probably argue, the power of the police State to break brown people and steal their handtrucks and rickshaws and rice bowls.
The same damn entity as should exclusively manage and dispense medical benefits so as to care.
Liar.
[the assumption] that socialism works
Socialism works just fine for Party members and their sycophants.
And for the revolutionaries who get to engage in rapturous moral preening while critiquing non-socialist systems (extant and not).
And for the petty bureaucrats who get to micromanage to their tyrannical hearts’ delight.
And for those who never live long enough to see it finally wind down, as all perpetual-motion machines eventually do.
If socialism didn’t “work” for some people at some level, nobody ever would push it.
Isn’t that the queer thing for such as us to attempt to grasp Darleen, that such “arguments” be taken by the flinger as somehow “persuasive” or at least as a means to acquire what the flinger thinks necessary?
We make the mistake that such folks use language to say what they believe to be true, when in fact they say what they believe to be USEFUL: for acquiring power, for moral preening, for psychological projection, you name it.
Everything is Calvinball once you abandon the notion that the truth can be told.
You only think he’s lying because you don’t speak Egalitarian.
Universal perfect fairness is both the sine qua non and ne plus ultra of Cosmic Justice. Anything that gets in the way of that is just grist for the grinding.
You know how it is, places to go, people to see, downtrodden to be uplifted, comfortable to be afflicted, wrongs to be righted,
immaneton to be eschatized.
*It took a hundred years to remedy all of this by passing health reform*
Rephrased, It took a hundred years to trick the American people into electing a Marxist that would ram a health care law through a partisan Congress, that the majority of people in the country didn’t agree with and didn’t want.
But, having never ever ever done anything but prove its vast capacity for moral failure and systemic implosion, it’s still one damn fine religion.
A quarter billion dead by the hand of their own collective in the 20th Century? Meh.
You overwrought bible-thumping church-goer, with your charities and old folks homes and international non-profits and missionary programs and soup kitchens dotted all over the inner city and innumerable local volunteers and your fucking families.
The biggest difference between right and left is one understands cause and effect and one doesn’t.
Who doesn’t love a list of the top 50 listers?
The Progressive argument for Obamacare bils down to:
I want it, so it’s Constitutional, because shut up, racist hater.
Meanwhile, there’s seeing and not seeing:
Probably why my wife won’t go ice fishing with me….
Shorter Kristof: We really, really care! So the fact that the programs we advocate have totally fucked up the lives of generations of the people we care about is entirely beside the point. It’s about caring, not about results!
HAHAHAHAHA care for victims.
ha. ha. ha.
Once again, I go back to my argument about how they don’t bother assembling problems in formats they can solve, just ones that reaffirm their narrative.
Besides, isn’t confessing that you’re fluent in only one language while the saner of us speak six admission of, well, basic functional idiocy in this complex system, Mr. Kristof?
Ahyep, here she comes.
Right on time.
Gaul…
Dear Obama: We aren’t firing you for your good intentions. We are are firing you because of your bad results and your inability to handle constructive feedback from your employers and supervisors.