Morality and Politics
Do Moral Principles affect our politics and if so what are they?
In his book The Righteous Mind the author Jonathan Haidt sets out six moral principles. They are:
· Care/harm evolved in response to the challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need, it makes us despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering.
· Liberty/oppression shows concerns about political equality and are related to a dislike of oppression and a concern for victims, and no desire for reciprocity.
· Fairness/cheating evolved in response to the challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited by free riders It makes us sensitive to indications that another person is likely to be a good (or bad partner) for collaboration and reciprocal altruism. It makes us want to shun or punish cheaters. It is primarily about proportionality. When a few members of a group contribute far more than the others most adults do not want to see the benefits distributed equally.
L Loyalty/betrayal evolved in response to the challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. It makes us sensitive to signs that another person is (or is not) a team player. It makes us reward the team player and it makes us want to hurt, ostracize those who betray us or our group.
· Authority/subversion evolved in response to the challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within social hierarchies. It make us sensitive to signs of rank or status and to signs that other people are (or are not) behaving properly, given their position.
· Sanctity/degradation evolved initially in response to the dilemma, and then the broader challenge of living in a world of parasites. It makes us wary of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats. It makes it possible for people to invest objects with irrational and extreme values- both positive and negative – which are important for binding groups together.
It appears that people rely upon these principles in different ways or to different degrees. Socialists rely primarily on the Care and Liberty principles. Whereas those on the right of politics use all six. If so, does that give Conservative politicians a broader variety of ways to connect with voters?
The political left tend to rest most strongly on the Care/harm and Liberty/oppression principles. These support ideals of social justice, which emphasize compassion for the poor and a struggle for equality among the groups that comprise society. Social justice groups emphasize solidarity – they call for people to come together to fight the oppression of bullying domineering elites.
Everyone cares about Care/harm but the political left turn out to be more disturbed by signs of violence and suffering compared to Conservatives.
Everyone care about Liberty/oppression but the left are most concerned about the rights of certain vulnerable groups ( e.g. racial minorities, children, animals) and they look to government to defend the weak against oppression by the strong. Conservatives, in contrast, hold more traditional ideas of liberty as the right to be left alone and they resent programmes that use government to infringe on their liberties in order to protect the groups that the left most care about. For example, small business owners support Conservatives because they resent government telling them how to run their businesses under its banner of protecting workers, minorities, consumers and the environment.
The Fairness/cheating principal is about proportionality. It is about making sure that people get what they deserve. Everyone cares about proportionality, everyone gets angry when people take more than they deserve, but Conservatives care more. Employees who work the hardest should be paid the most. The left are ambivalent but Conservatives in contrast endorse this enthusiastically.
Conservatives think it is self evident that responses to crimes should be based on proportionality, as shown in the slogan “Three strikes and you’re out” Yet the political left are uncomfortable with retribution. After all retribution causes ham and harm activates the Care/harm principle.
The remaining three moral principles show the biggest and most consistent partisan differences. The political left are ambivalent about these principles at best, whereas Conservatives embrace them.
The political left embrace the three moral principles of Care/harm, Liberty/oppression and Fairness/cheating but are often willing to trade away fairness when it conflicts with compassion or with their fight against oppression. Conservatives believe in all six moral principles although they are more willing to sacrifice Care and let some people get hurt in order to achieve their many other moral principles.
Moral psychology can help to explain why the Labour Party has had so much difficulty connecting with voters, whilst Conservatives speak more directly to the voters because they have a better grasp of the theory of moral principles because they trigger every single principle.
One of the great puzzles about democracy at the moment is why rural and working class voters choose to vote Conservative when it is Labour that wants to redistribute money more evenly? Labour often say that Conservatives have duped these people into voting against their economic self interest, but from the perspective of Moral Principles, rural and working class voters were in fact voting for their moral interests. They don’t want to eat at expensive restaurant, they don’t want their nation to devote itself primarily to the care of victims and the pursuit of social justice.
For 130 years the Conservative Party understood these Moral Principles and targeted the voters accordingly, which is why it dominated UK politics during this period. Unfortunately it lost sight of them in the last 25 years and has suffered accordingly. The question is can it recover and get them back?
The Conservatives have one further problem. They have allowed their membership to decline to an insignificant level. This is fatal. People love groups, we develop our virtues in groups, even though these groups necessarily exclude non-members. If you destroy your group you dissolve all internal structure, you destroy your moral capital.
Real Conservatives understand this point. The subdivisions add up to the greater whole. Edmund Burke said it in 1790:
To be attached to the subdivision (e.g. Christian Conservatives, Conservative Friends of Israel etc.) to love the little platoons we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.
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