Have I mentioned how much I appreciate our readers and their comments? In the last few days, the intelligence level has been staggering. A few are so good they deserve to be blog posts of their own. This was one of them.
The context was Liberal Builders, Conservative Defenders, & Political Debate, my response to Michael Totten's famous Builders and Defenders article. I noted that:
"...If liberal hypocrisy is partly a result of "perfectly rational priorities," then one must grant that so are conservative beliefs which hold many on the Left as de facto shills for hostile powers and/or enemies of civilization. And of course, the one belief set feeds the other - both ways.... How do we get off this train?After the rest of that post and about 20 or so comments, Francis Porretto chimed in:...Michael Walzer says: "I have a modest agenda: put decency first, and then we will see." Let's follow that thread for a bit, on both sides of the political aisle...."
Decency
by Francis W. Porretto,
Palace of Reason: "Freedom, Wealth, and Peace"
The decency question is paramount. I'm surprised no other commenter has addressed it.
"Decent" comes from the old Latin word decens, which means fitting or appropriate. What's appropriate is always contextual. However, context doesn't tell all; it doesn't address fundamental moral questions about right and wrong -- and here we come to the real cleavage issue that divides Left from Right.
The Left tends to maintain that there are no absolutes in morality, while the Right maintains the opposite. Which is why I generally identify with the Right: without a moral foundation, it's impossible to know when to act against, which is the only thing government can ever do, by its very nature.
The underlying impulse for the Left's position is comprehensible. It's an overreaction to traditional moral strictures, mostly about sex, that were based upon religious premises. But if ever there were a case of tossing out the baby with the bathwater, this is it.
On the other side of the aisle, Rightists have largely effaced the borders between those things that are wrong in principle, such as murder, and those things that are bad for you, such as intoxication. This, of course, feeds Leftists' distaste for them and fear of their political intentions.
Can we settle the question of "what is politically decent?" in any general setting?
I think it's possible, but difficult. It will require a return to shared premises about moral fundamentals: the acceptable uses of force. It will require an agreement that those moral strictures are permanently superior to all other political goals. And it will require recognition that ours is a universe in which ends and means cannot be distinguished from one another.
"Decent" people, in the colloquial sense, want the best for one another, and will exert some effort on others' behalf out of pure fellow-feeling. But they would also be horrified and remorseful if, out of good intentions, they were to do one another actual harm. A true League Of The Decent would be most watchful of its own failures, because failure is the universe's way of telling you that you don't know enough to achieve your goals. It would admit its mistakes openly, make restitution for them, and strain mightily to avoid repeating them. It would never promote its intentions above its achievements.
How do we get there from our current, fractious, nearly unendurable political impasse?
Get a few liberals and a few conservatives into a big room. Provide comfy chairs, lots of decaf and some first-rate jelly doughnuts. Then get them talking about their failures, and what they learned from them. Don't allow anyone to talk about a political achievement until he's first described the failure that taught him what he needed to know to achieve it. And don't allow anyone to characterize the passage of a law, or a court decision, or any other pure operation of government power as an "achievement"; achievements and failures are to be determined solely from changes in people's health, wealth, and security.
Inasmuch as the human race's principal product is mistakes, the restoration of political humility, whether in the above fashion or any other, is prerequisite to curing our other political ills. And there's a funny thing about humility: it's appropriate to any and every context. It's always decent.
I consider decency to be one of the foundations of real virtue; even in battle one can be decent, and much of the ritual that surrounds martial arts is the echo of those forms of decency.
Our troops in Iraq...giving medical aid to the fallen Iraqui troops who they had, moments before, been shooting...demonstrated this last month.
Decency is what allows relationships to last long enough to grow roots, and what allows bitter enemies to ultimately coexist.
I'm glad it's been brought out of the closet.
A.L.
Decency is a virtue. It takes a great deal more character to be decent than to be cruel.
Remember - "All cruelty springs from weakness."
The left will not get it together until it changes on two major points. These points cover decency in economics and government. They are to a certain extent intertwined. There can be no decent politics without decent economics. Theft is indecent. Whether from the rich or the poor. The government hand on the socially outcast is also indecent. Gays and drug users among others.
1. Socialism is dead. The more socialist the country the worse it's economic performance. The average black in America is doing better than the average Swede - economically. Cuba and North Korea are both economic and human rights basket cases. This is not an accident as we have learned from such failures as the USSR, Mao's China (the Red Book was fun until the results were in), and a host of lesser cases - such as Germany, France, and Sweden.
2. Militant limited government democracy is the new foreign policy of the center. i.e. Militant extension of the Bill of Rights to the world.
#1 will be hard to swallow. But to be relevant this will have to be done.
#2 used to be the position of the left when the right was supporting so many cold war despots. Just because the right has adopted this position does not mean it is wrong.
What points #1 & #2 do is to take economic policy and foreign policy out of the realm of politics (relatively). What is left is social policy. The original liberal/conservative divide.
The drug war needs to be cleaned up desperately. (a very good case for less government intervention). We need to keep an eye on the Santorums in government, the Bill Bennetts (I don't care what beliefs they have as long as they don't get them enacted into law).
The center in America is for the most part libertarian. The left will have to move in that direction if it wants to remain viable.
If God, being the most powerful Being that exists, had wanted your neighbor to be the way you think he should be, he would have made him that way. If you recognize that God did not make your neighbor to your liking, then you’ve made the first step towards humility. The final step in humility? Accepting your neighbor as God made him to be.
Well, here's my chance at being decent. I suppose I'm a conservative, so here's my take on one of our big failures.
For far too long, conservatives were too keen to try to preserve democracy in America by undermining it abroad, often with terrible results. Installing and backing, Pinochet left thousands dead, countless more terrified and in grief. I'll never understand how conservatives can justify this with, "But he brought about an economic revival!" To those, I would ask, how much money would you be willing to sacrifice your family members for? For what level of GDP growth and inflation would you let your father be led off into the night, blindfolded?
These moral compromises of the Cold War were perhaps justified - perhaps! - but they are nevertheless a deep stain on our national honor.
It is this lesson which led to my complete support for the war in Iraq, and it is this lesson which leads me to despair at the administration's seemingly half-hearted attempts at nation-building in its aftermath.
Now, where are the Krispy Kremes?
Who knows what the real administration policy is? The thought that they can leave Iraq after installing it's elected government is nutso.
It isn't the first election that counts it's the second.
Time will tell what is actually meant by "leave".
A major cause for the effacing of the borders between "wrong in principle" and "bad for you" is cost. "Bad for you" actions have an inherent cost associated with them. The left generaly wants society to pay these costs, while the right wants the individual to pay the cost. In depending on the action, the right ends up looking like an ogre. As politcal cover, the right moves "Bad for you" to "wrong in principle".
I've expanded on these thoughts in a fresh essay just posted to the Palace, at the Curmudgeon's Corner. Click here.
"It is this lesson which led to my complete support for the war in Iraq, and it is this lesson which leads me to despair at the administration's seemingly half-hearted attempts at nation-building in its aftermath."You're kidding, right? It's only been a couple weeks at most that we've been in the country. I strongly suspect we'll have troops stationed in Iraq for the next fifty years as in Germany and Japan.
I very much enjoyed your essay on decency in politics. However, two qubbles:
1. I cannot agree that because leftists (or others) believe there are no absolutes in morality, they are without a moral foundation. It seems to me that in politics the options are more often better-or-worse than good-versus-evil, and the ability to distinguish shades of grey is more useful than the compulsion to define everything as black or white. I seem to hear someone screaming about relativism and slippery slopes, so let me just say that often the slope seems slippery when you can't see the steps. The abilty to make distinctions, weigh options, predict consequences, and make reasonable decisions is the foundation of my morality, and, I believe, of everyone who hasn't suurendered his-or-her mind to some dogma.
2. Why is it that so many conservatives refuse to recognize the differences between liberalism and socialism, communism, anarchism, or any other political philosophy to the left of their own? It almost seems that they want to demonize liberalism by intentionally confusing it with other ideologies, rather than opposing it with rational argument. Not very decent of them, is it?
" I cannot agree that because leftists (or others) believe there are no absolutes in morality, they are without a moral foundation."
Actually, I think leftists do sometimes take a very moral absolutist view of things. A good example of this would probably be Chomsky.
Excitableboy, I suppose the irony of your part two after you having written part one is entirely lost on you.
But to keep this from being entirely an ad hominem attack (which would be downright indecent!) I will just say that in my personal experience, it is those to the left of me that show far less appreciation for nuance and the little steps along the slippery slope than those to the right of me. For example, when discussing Saddam's atrocities, the atrocities of the US were always brought up in response (Pinochet was a favorite. Israel was another.) Or when discussing a Palestinian suicide bombing that targetted civilians, Jenin was brought up for a while and then when that blew over the missile dropped on the one HAMAS leader's house was mentioned.
Not to mention the comparisons of the US with Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia due to the PATRIOT ACT (which I am very much not crazy about) that seem to get made regularly.
All that to say, I would wholeheartedly agree with both of your points if only they were presented as stumbling blocks that both sides do and that we ourselves need to look out for instead of as things that they do and we don't.
Decency