Classical Values :: Left out of the framing

Left out of the framing

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record, but one of the things which most worries me right now is the way libertarianism is being increasingly written out of serious discussions of what it is that defines us. What George Lakoff would call the "framing" of political theory itself.

One of the leading "framers" who seems to be emerging is University of Virginia Associate Professor Jonathan Haidt.

A liberal, he clearly likes the liberal/conservative dichotomy, and he has come up with seemingly scientific tests to justify his theory of the framing which are well received on the left.

There are five categories he uses to measure morality (Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity), although he is thinking of adding a sixth:

Much of our present research involves applying the theory to political "cultures" such as those of liberals and conservatives. The current American culture war, we have found, can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality relying almost exclusively on the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations; conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all five foundations, including Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. [Note: We are currently investigating other candidate foundations. The main contender for being a 6th foundation is Liberty/constraint, which includes both lifestyle liberty, and also negative liberty -- the freedom to be left alone by government. Liberals score higher on lifestyle liberty; conservatives on negative liberty]

I can't help notice that even though he's added a "6th foundation" which would seem to go to the heart of the difference between libertarians and both liberals and conservatives, he still insists on the liberal versus conservative framework.

Why is that?

It is one thing to disagree with libertarianism, but to not acknowledge its existence is to disregard it entirely. Are libertarians so freakish that they are extreme, off-the-chart outliers?

When I complained about this guy before, maybe I didn't take him seriously enough (and parenthetically, I should frankly admit here that my failure to take things seriously may be a core problem):

It never ceases to amaze me the way liberals will claim that conservatives are "authoritarian" in nature when the latter are overwhelmingly against government telling people what to do. Even religious conservatives, much as I disagree with them, tend to believe in divine authority, perhaps biblical authority, but they generally admit that it's beyond the control of man. Liberalism once meant belief in freedom, but it has degenerated into hopeless buttinskyism, and there is no political class more enamored with the idea of telling people what to do. Often at gunpoint. The idea that conservatives are more "authoritarian" is one of the big lies of politics.

And

Attempting to chart one's political views by measuring levels of disgust over things like spiders crawling on faces, rotten meat, dead bodies is silly, because these matters ultimately involve taste, and I can't help notice that what is entirely omitted in the definitions of conservatism are economic matters. (I often suspect that the culture war is intended to keep us bickering over penises in the hope we won't notice the country is going bankrupt, but that's another rant.)

Anyway, a very thoughtful post by A Goy and his Blog (which endorses the premises of Professor Haidt's liberal versus conservative dichotomy) reminded me of my previous post, as well as my ongoing worry that libertarianism is being written out of the discussion, equation, and even framing. While it ought to surprise no one that liberals and conservatives would agree on editing libertarianism out, when they agree to do it by way of scientific principle, that gets my attention.

So, trying to be as thorough as my disorganized nature will allow, and keeping in mind that my last visit to the Haidt site consisted only of taking the Disgust test, this time I took the overall Moral Compass test.

For starters, I strongly dislike the test's methodology. I find it impossible to give accurate and unambiguous answers to questions like this:

When you decide whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are the following considerations relevant to your thinking? Please answer on a scale from

Not At All Relevant (This consideration has nothing to do with my judgments of right and wrong)

to Extremely Relevant (This is one of the most important factors when I judge right and wrong)

[...]

Whether or not someone violated standards of purity and decency.

It is impossible to answer whether or not someone violated standards of purity and decency, because we do not know what is meant by the terms. Purity of what? The air, the water, sexuality, personal hygiene? And whose standards? Clearly the 9/11 hijackers thought they were adhering to the highest possible standards of purity and decency, but I think they're some of the foulest and most morally impure beings who ever walked the earth. Ditto Himmler and his SS crackpot followers. I guess I would rate purity and decency as important in my clinical analysis of them, but I would not consider it as a factor in their defense. So while it is highly relevant, I suspect that sort of relevance is not the sense the question intends.

Ditto this question:

Whether or not someone acted in a way that God would approve of.

I am not so arrogant as to know what God would approve of. I believe in following the Golden Rule, OK? The Nazis and the 9/11 hijackers obviously did not. And much as I would like to think that my Golden Rule morality is what God would approve of, certainly the 9/11 hijackers have a very different view. So again, in gauging the "relevance" I assign to it is not an accurate depiction of my view of God, and does not reflect my moral judgment. I do not consider it a defense that these people believed God approved of their evil deeds. In fact, I think it makes them worse. So I consider it highly relevant, but (I suspect) not in the way the question intends.

Similarly in considering

"Whether or not someone did something to betray his or her group"

it is impossible to give an answer reflecting my personal moral views over the betrayal of a "group." It depends on the group. Betraying an evil group is not the same thing as betraying a good group. And "betraying" a group to which one has been assigned without one's consent (as in the case of virtually all identity politics-derived groups), well, sorry liberals, but I don't consider that a betrayal at all. (Whether it is possible for me to "betray" conservatism, I don't know...) In what might seem a contradiction, I value loyalty as an operating principle, but that's probably because I consider loyalty to be an individual and not a collective concept.

Anyway, the list goes on and on:

"Whether or not someone conformed to the traditions of society."

What traditions? Saudi traditions or American traditions? What traditions might they be? Beheading adulterers is not a tradition I would respect, but then, neither are Social Security, Medicare, or Hollywood.

With my objections in mind, here are my results (mine are in green, the liberals are in blue, the conservatives are in red):

Whether I am "liberal" or "conservative," who knows? Do I really have to be one or the other? Says who?

Can I be allowed to just think what I think without being labeled, diagnosed, and categorized?

Haidt is just the latest in a long line of of those who would crudely reduce rational thought to personality traits, on the claim that he can study political and psychological phenomenae the same way natural science studies atoms and ant colonies. It's likely out-of-print, but the late Herbert Storing put together a fine collection of essays on the defects of this approach at least 40 years ago in his Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics. The mere fact that you don't fit into his boxes is enough to suggest the essentially blinkered nature of Haidt's views.

HMI · March 28, 2010 01:51 PM