DL Open Thread Monday April 11 2022

Note: This isn’t an open thread so much as an open letter to Steve Newton. He is (was?) a libertarian and in the early days of blogging I was very dismissive of Libertarianism in general and him in particular. I’m still dismissive of libertarianism, but I’ve learned that Steve is a thoughtful historian and social scientist who cares about ideas and about America. That sounds awfully corny, but there you have it.

How will historians decide when one of Americans two major party’s lost its fucking mind?  With Republicans attempting to one-up each other in mean-spirited craziness on a daily basis, I suppose it is easy for us to blame Trump for the GOP going ka-plooey.   He was the President who truly gave up on trying to govern as a President of the entire country and he clearly turned the party’s racial hatred up to 11. But even if Trump hadn’t stepped into the spotlight when he did, we would still have had Ted Cruz.  We’d still have Mitch McConnell and Ginny Thomas.

So pulling the lens back a bit, and asking “what changed?” historians will perhaps point the finger of blame at Rupert Murdoch.  The Australian sociopath gave Karl Rove and Roger Ailes free reign to poison the minds of a generation of Americans.  But I think they will view “conservative media” as symptoms, not the disease.  A generation of conservatives brains were softened and ripe for poisoning.

I suspect real core reason history will note that GOP went ka-plooey around the turn of the century was due to a compete breakdown in the ethical systems that guided conservative thinking for generations.

If we view “Virtue Ethics”  as an ethical model, or a way of thinking about ethics which emphasizes an individual’s moral character, and contrast that with and ethical approach that emphasizes duties or rules, it is easy to see that, for the most part, liberalism is rooted in virtue ethics and conservatism more closely associated with rules.  If you have ever worked alongside a conservative you know how edgy and upset ambiguity makes them.  And you only need to look at the conservative love of showy religiously, authoritarianism and hierarchy to see that see that “rules based” describes conservative “thinking” such as it is.

Consider every hateful anti-trans argument that conservatives have come up with over the past few years.  They are all rooted in the idea that transgender is a) not real because it is breaking God’s rules governing gender, and b) attempts by some to gain some advantage in athletics, or use a bathroom that they shouldn’t.  All evil is explained in terms of rule breaking.  Judicial Originalism, the idea that the constitutional text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that it became law, fits neatly into this worldview.  This translates down to the GOP rank and file as loud appeals to THE CONSTITUTION. So even when the average Trump rally goer does’t understand the document, they can be comforted by the fact that they know it is a document that holds some sort of authority.

But to have a rules based system of ethics means that ultimately you are influenced by rewards and punishments.  Following rules is “the right thing to do” because it results in rewards.  (Whereas a person guided by virtue ethics views “doing the right thing” as an end in itself.)   So how does that explain the gross rule breaking going on now among Republicans?  Well, rules (like elections) only make sense to conservatives when the the rules result in putting them on top or giving them some advantage.  If those results don’t flow from the rules, the rules must be broken, debased or fraudulent.  If man’s rules leave them feeling uneasy, they appeal to a higher set of rules.  Lying, therefor isn’t “wrong” for conservatives because there is nothing inherently valuable about truthfulness or integrity.

Watching “The Gilded Age” on HBO I was struck by how many rules New York “society” imposed on the wealthy around 1870.  For all their wealth, they were corseted up with esoteric rules of manners and discourse that guided their behavior. All those rules were, or course,  completely made up, but they were real to the Astors and Vanderbilts. Their character and honor hung on how well they followed the rules.  The Astors and Vanderbilts were obviously terrible, but the rules required them to be cognizant of the public’s perception of their character, honor and integrity.

That’s all gone.  For conservatives, there is no punishment for having low character.  There are only rewards for crashing through old-timey norms like the Hawaiian Punch mascot crashing through masonry walls.