A TALE OF TWO MORALITIES

Paul Krugman recently wrote a profound piece pinpointing a critical difference between the morality of conservatives and liberals. The core of his message is that there are two moral conceptions:

"One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate."

"The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty."

I have often thought in similar terms of the divide between conservatives and liberals:

Conservatives are wedded to the rules — an ideological Master Narrative propounding (at least in theory) unfettered capitalism; free markets; low taxes; minimum government; strong military; willingness to use military force, if perceived to be necessary; and representative democracy — and approve of whatever outcome the rules produce. In the conservative mind, the rules are morally justified, paramount and, therefore, unchangeable and unassailable. Accordingly, with simple, if flawed logic, conservatives claim the results their moral rules produce must necessarily be moral.

Over the past 3 decades, conservative rules have produced results favoring the rich, undermining the poor and causing the middle class to mark time economically. If the rich get richer, the theory goes, it is because they are worthy (hard-working, filled with initiative, persevering, intelligent, etc.); and if the poor get poorer, it is because they are not (i.e. they are slothful, indolent, uneducated, etc); so for the ‘unworthy,’ poverty is a fitting result, in the conservative mindset.

Overarching reverence for the rules explains why on the subject of healthcare, conservatives are unmoved by statistics showing that the rules produce 50 million uninsured, millions of bankruptcies, thousands of avoidable deaths. That same rule-reverence also explains why on the subject of abortion, conservatives are unmoved by evidence of thousands of ‘deaths by coat hanger,’ and on the subject of narcotics, conservatives give little, if any, weight to the violence stemming from continued criminalization of drugs.

Liberals, on the other hand, focus on the results produced by the rules, and if the results are morally or practically objectionable, liberals believe in changing the rules to produce a more morally and practically desirable result (the political equivalent of ‘managing by results’). Therefore, liberals tend to be unmoved by conservative arguments based primarily on the morality of the rules.

Unlike the conservatives, united by a common, unchanging creed, liberals tend to squabble a lot about just how the rules ought to be changed, simply because of the myriad combinations and permutations of possible results and developing socio-economic conditions their rule changes must address. Consequently, the lack of a pat Master Narrative tends to weaken cohesiveness within the liberal ranks. (Someone once asked me why the liberals seem to have such difficulty uniting behind a common platform, to which I replied: “Because they think, or more accurately, continually rethink their positions to adapt the rules to constantly evolving conditions and results, unlike conservatives who, having accepted the conservative rules, unite behind an unchanging, conservative Master Narrative, be it Reaganomics or the Bible.”)

That said, in the U.S., the closest thing to a liberal Master Narrative includes counterweights to the conservative platform: sensible regulation of both capitalism and markets to curb excesses, progressive taxes high enough to cover government expenses, balanced military spending accompanied by greater reluctance to wage war, and greater control by the government of the purse strings, particularly as relates to Social Security and health insurance and care, to provide at least minimum necessary sustenance and medical care. They also favor righting the disequilibria of wealth and income which might otherwise lead to civil unrest and war.

Notably, the American left is essentially the opposite wing of the same bird. Consequently, both sides agree on certain core principles: capitalism and the market mechanism for the allocation of scarce resources, the need for a standing army for defense, and democracy for obtaining the consent of the governed. Where they differ is the extent of the government’s involvement in the implementation of these principles.

Bottom line: Both conservatives and liberals, then, are driven by morality — conservatives by the morality of the rules, liberals by the morality of the results.

As whenever morality is engaged, both sides tend to be intransigent. Debates between conservatives and liberals, therefore, tend to be unavailing because neither side is willing to abandon what are to them moral principles nor are they willing to give weight to the other’s arguments.

That is why it takes a calamity, like the Great Depression, to prompt radical change of the rules, as occurred in the 1930s. Only when the results of the existing rules are so unquestionably bad, unjust, dysfunctional, will the swing vote in the center re-prioritize, raising up the importance of results over rules, and join a more coherent Left in agreeing to change the rules radically.

President Obama’s problem is that the emergency monetary and fiscal measures were reasonably effective in preventing the Great Recession from degenerating into a Great Depression, dampening the leftward shift. Consequently, only modest reforms were enacted during Obama’s first two years.