2008-09-09 What Makes People Vote Republican/woozle

Analysis

Preface

This post is mainly about an article written by Jonathan Haidt, but adding two things:

• Focus on the two paragraphs beginning with "A Durkheimian ethos...", implying that they are of particular interest
• The parting "You might even conclude, as I suspect Haidt does, that Republican voters tend to be more nuanced and sophisticated than Democratic voters."

If we're talking about the validity of Barone's post, then, we're mainly talking about the validity of Haidt's article (with emphasis on those two paragraphs) plus Barone's additional parting shot.

Haidt: introduction

The first hint of trouble (i.e. anything that I can disagree with) is when Haidt says:

People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity" – a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

The first sentence isn't the problem; it is pretty clearly true that the US Republican brand of conservatism does just that -- present the world in simple, easy-to-digest terms which exploit people's fears for illicit gain. Clearly Haidt is suggesting that the problem with the US Democratic brand of liberalism, then, is that it chooses not to hide the complexity -- thus turning off conservative sympathies. The implied criticism would seem to be not with the integrity or value of Democratism/liberalism, but with its presentation -- its marketing.

So Haidt is, presumably, going to give us some good advice for how to better market liberalism, which he has just stated is more honest than conservatism, right? Let's read on...

"Diagnosis is a pleasure," continues Haidt, "...but with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies..."

Now hold on a minute, buckaroos. A core part of liberalism is the idea that other ways and traditions may have value. Liberalism embraces the idea of diversity. You can't tell me, who has spent the past 6 months as a "rational liberal" debating political philosophy with a "progressive conservative", that I'm not trying to see the good in conservatism.

If anyone is rejecting the idea of learning from other ideologies, it would be conservatives. If conservatism chooses to shoot itself in the foot by insisting on an all-or-nothing, dominate-or-be-dominated view of the political spectrum, that is a choice made by conservatives -- not liberals. Conservatism clearly cannot win on those terms, and conservatives must learn to accept -- permanently -- the liberal ideas of diversity and tolerance if their philosophy is going to survive. This isn't a matter of liberalism "winning" on some "liberal talking point"; it's a matter of getting along peacefully.

Haidt loses 2 points: one for the straw man attack on liberalism, and one for using appeal to guilt based on that fallacy.

Haidt concludes this thought by continuing:

...and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is."

Aside from the "halo" swipe, he seems to be getting back on firmer ground: where have Democrats gone wrong in being persuasive to those more inclined to vote Republican? Republicans, says Haidt, want their argument framed in terms of morality -- so we need to have a better understanding of what that is.

Haidt: morality

First, Haidt rejects the idea that morality is solely about "how we treat each other", citing as examples ancient "rules about menstruation, who can eat what, and who can have sex with whom". This makes some rather questionable assumptions:

• That these laws were considered "morals" at the time, rather than just "laws" -- rules which people felt compelled to obey, rather than rules which most people agreed were right
• That morality worked the same way in ancient times as it does now (I don't think so; many of those laws seem pretty bizarre and often downright immoral to me, so if they accurately represent the morality of the time, we must have matured a lot since then)

Haidt adds that "There is no rational or health-related way to explain these laws.". Okay, so what is the reason for them? Oh, wait, he said there is no rational way to explain them. So they were totally arbitrary. Got it. Moving on...

Haidt then advances the hypothesis that these laws were drawn up on the basis of what an ancient cleric might have found to be "disgusting". (Hmm, I thought he said there was no rational way to explain them. Surely if you're a powerful priest, and something disgusts you, you would quite reasonably want to outlaw it, being ancient and everything, and not really knowing any better or having any reason to question one's ideas, since liberalism hadn't been invented yet. So is Haidt excluding emotion as a possible motivator for rational action, here?)

Haidt then tested this hypothesis for his dissertation, where he "made up stories about people who did things that were disgusting or disrespectful yet perfectly harmless." What he found was that most people agreed that the actions were wrong even though nobody was harmed -- which, he argues, supports his hypothesis that morality is not (or not entirely) based on avoidance of harm to others.

What it suggests to me is that most people don't think these things through very carefully. Just because most people don't know the reasons why they do or believe things doesn't mean there wasn't originally a reason, nor does it mean that "going along" with them for the sake of social harmony is irrational.

Let's take a look at some the examples he cites:

• "a woman ... can't find any rags in her house so she cuts up an old American flag and uses the pieces to clean her toilet, in private": Knowing that many people are very attached to the flag, it would arguably be emotionally hurtful to them to willfully destroy one in a way that seems disrespectful. Also, some people might assume that any such destruction was a political statement against America; whether or not this is true, it would be a bad idea to accidentally create such an impression. (The question of whether these feelings about a piece of colored cloth are rational is a separate discussion.)
• "a family whose dog is killed by a car, so they dismember the body and cook it for dinner": There are all kinds of flaws with this as an example supporting Haidt's point. First of all, some cultures do eat dog meat (what was that about liberals believing "that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies", Dr. Haidt?). People in such cultures are probably familiar with the proper preparation of such meat, and would therefore know how to do it safely. Their culinary practices have been through the filter of long experience with dog meat, and so are more likely to be safe than those some American suburban family which is used to buying USDA-inspected Grade A meat from the store.

Most (how many?) of the respondents agreed that the actions were "morally wrong" although "nobody was harmed". (Is it really fair to say that "nobody was harmed" in a hypothetical example where the risks aren't even discussed? Would it be "morally wrong" to drive a child-filled schoolbus at 90 MPH towards a cliff, as long as you slam on the brakes in time to prevent it from actually going over?)

In any case, Haidt draws the following conclusions:

• "when gut feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare", and people will exert great efforts "to fabricate harmful consequences that could justify their gut-based condemnation."
  • There is nothing wrong with this, on the face of it. Haidt further concludes "If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule, choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy arguments were forms of persuasion." So now we're back in the territory where Haidt could be offering suggestions to make the liberal message more viscerally appealing -- although one might almost think he is criticizing the Democrats for using "policy arguments" -- he must be using a different meaning of the phrase than I'm aware of, because calling something "morally wrong/right" is also a policy argument, it's just not one based in rationality.
  • One is forced to conclude that he is saying that Dems need to use fewer rational arguments and more appeals to emotion in their arguments. While this might be more successful at grabbing conservative ears, wouldn't it also be somewhat dishonest? And from a purely amoral/strategic point of view, wouldn't this be allowing the terms of the argument to be determined by conservatives, who specialize in such arguments and have staked out their territory almost exclusively on the basis of whether it can be phrased in such emotionally-appealing, simple, good-vs.-evil terms – playing on their field, as it were, and into their hands? (For my money, though, the "honesty" factor is more important than which side is more compelling.)
• "the moral domain varies across cultures" – to which my gut reaction is "Well DUHHH", followed by the similarly-obvious thought that this is exactly why morality (i.e. any single subculture's idea of what is good or bad) cannot be used as a basis for national policy in a multicultural society. Duhhh.

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