From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Nov 27 2004 - 21:35:47 GMT
Steve, edeads, Marsha, Erin and all MOQers:
edeads said:
The "values voters" that likely won the election for Bush were drawn to the
polls largely by a platform that encroaches upon abortion rights and
supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. They believe that
suppression of these biological activities will enhance society. ...Yet DMB
on 11/6 notes: The conservatives THINK they are putting "morals" over "sin",
but they're actually putting religious beliefs over individual rights. ...A
first question becomes, Are these biological qualities (abortion,
homosexuality)threatening to destroy society? Similarly, a second question
arises, Are the "values voters" undermining intellectual freedom for their
own purpose?
dmb says:
I don't think abortion or homosexuality can really be compared to murder and
adultry. The ballot issues in the states and the constitutional amendment at
the federal were all concerned with gay marriage, and not a prohibition of
homosexual sex acts or sexual promiscuity. It was about denying certain
rights to a particular class of individuals. Abortion is a little more
tricky, but it is still fundamentally a question of rights. In China women
are forced to have abortions. Would it really be any less horrifying if
women in the USA were forced to have children? What if that "child" is the
product of rape or incest? What if medical conditions are such that giving
birth would kill the woman? Or what if the women has her own reasons for
thinking that motherhood would deprive her of the kind of life she seeks or
rob her of all she holds dear? The point is, the issue of abortion is not
about controlling destructive biological impulses like vice crimes. Its
about a woman's right to be in charge of her own life. And the issue of gay
marriage is about the same rights any of enjoy by virtue of being legally
married; visit a dying spouse in the hospital, custody rights, inheritance,
insurance and all that boring stuff. This is what is denied to gay couples.
edeads said:
Proscriptions against abortion or the rights of homosexual couples appear to
me to mostly fit this ("proscriptions against drugs, murder, adultery, theft
and the like.") description.
...Yet I often find it challenging to distinguish between social-biological
or
intellectual-social intefaces. The laws that impact society are arrived at
in the intellectual level; Pirsig p162 notes, "Third, there were moral codes
that established the supremacy of the intellectual order over the social
order-democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech, freedom of the press." As
such, this election and the results represent an intellectual-social
dynamic.
dmb says:
Pirsig restates the same idea again in chapter 24, but there specifically
points out that the moral code that protects intellect from society is all
about "human rights". He also points out that "unless you separate these two
levels of moral codes you get a paralyzing confusion as to whether society
is moral or immoral. That paralyzing confusion is what dominates all
thoughts about morality and society today". That's why is important to sort
these issues out and really look at what values are in play.
Steve peterson 11/5/04 said: .............Since reading Lila, I have long
thought that the Democrats were making a huge mistake by shying away from
use of the terms "morality" and "values." Liberals have failed to
articulate their moral view. They have tended to cringe at the sound of
these words and allowed the Republicans to seize the terms of debate that
were perhaps the most important in deciding the election.
dmb says:
I know why "morality" and "values" make liberals cringe and I'm pretty
certain that its NOT because they don't have any. I think that most liberals
see them as intentionally vague platitudes that usually serve as thinly
vieled hate speech. I think if we look at Pirsig's descriptions of the
conflict between social and intellectual values, we can see that what
conservatives mean by morality is traditional relgious morality and the
family values they defending are PATRIARCHAL family values of a particular
type. George Lakoff, author of MORAL POLITICS and a professor of linguistics
at UC Berkeley writes about this topic in the December 6th issue of THE
NATION...
"Moral values at the national level are idealized family values projected
onto the nation. Progressive values are the values of a responsible
nurturant family, where parents are equally responsible... If you empathize
with your children, you will want them to have strong prtection, fair and
equal treatment and fulfillment in life. Fulfillment requires freedom,
freedom requires opportunity and opportunity requires prosperity. Since you
family lives in, and requires, a comminity, communty building and community
service are required. Community requires cooperaton, which requires trust,
which requires honesty and open communication. Those are progressive values
- in politics as well as family life.
...On the other hand, the strict-father family model asumes that evil and
danger will alway lurk in the world, that life is difficult, that there will
always be winners and losers and that children are born bad - they want to
do what feels good, not what's right - and have to be made good. A strict
father is needed to protect and support the family and to teach his kids
right from wrong. That can be done in only one way; punishment painful
enough thta, to avoid it, children will learn the internal discipline
necessary to be moral. That discipline can also make them prosperous if they
seek their self-interest and no one interferes. Mommy isn't strong enough to
protect the family and is too soft-hearted to discipline the children.
That's why fathers are necessary."
dmb continues:
I think Lakoff is really onto something there. I recall that Pirsig
described the conflict between European and American Indian attitudes toward
children and family life as one of the elements in the social-intellectual
conflict, that kindness to children was opposed to old-world ideas of
discipline and was being dressed up as intellectual values in that political
conflict. We see this same conflict in an old story Erin told...
Erin wrote:
When a liberal sees a drowning man, he throws him a life preserver, but in
his hurry to find someone else to rescue doesn't bother to tie it off to the
shore, so the drowning man stays afloat but also adrift.
When a conservative sees a drowning man, he ties the life preserver to the
shore half a rope length short of the drowning man, then throws the life
preserver out, requiring the drowning man to participate in his own rescue.
dmb continues:
In this scenario liberals are compassionate and hair-brained, like a loving
but ditzy mom, while conservatives are like tough, character-building
fathers. I think the "story" expresses a fondness for partriarchy and is
more than a little bit misogynistic, but the point is that Lakoff is only
saying something we already know on some level. These kinds of things need
to be emotional more than rational. We feel them in our guts rather than
know them in our heads, so to speak. And of course it has a great deal to do
with the sort of family one grew up in. And to bring us back to the
particulars, this two opposed family styles have a way of expressing
themselves in nearly all of the so-called cultural issues as well as foreign
policy issues. I'll finish with a little bit more from Lakoff's article to
bring it all home. When we apply the patriarchal family values to the nation
as a whole, we get a perspective that says...
"The President is to be obeyed; since he knows right from wrong, his
authority is legitimate and not to be questioned. In foreign policy, he is
also the absolute moral authority and so needs no advice from lesser
counties. (No global test" as Bush put it) ...The so-called 'moral issues'
are affronts to strict-father morality. Strict-father marriage cannot be
gay; it must be between a man and a woman. For a wife to seek an abortion on
her own or a daughter to need one is an affront to strict-father control
over the behavior of the women in his family. They are not the main moral
issues in themselves; rather they are symbolic of the entire of the entire
strict-father identity as applied to all spheres of life. That's why they
are so powerful for conservatives."
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