Follow the Things that are “Sacred”

“It’s the economy stupid!” is the mantra that suggests that when push comes to shove, voters always vote their pocketbooks, and in harsh economic times, it would seem to be self-evident that the presidential candidate that offers the clearest path to that better economy will be the victor in November. So you’d think, and for a very substantial number of voters, that is clearly the case. But how do you explain voters in local school districts with young children, who are going to obviously deteriorating schools, actually voting against programs to improve those schools? Or people at the lower end of the economic spectrum who actually receive some form of government benefits or subsidies voting to reduce government (and hence their benefits), cut taxes for the richest segment of society and actually vote for politicians who openly oppose environment regulations that keep air and water from being polluted or laws that are aimed at preventing another financial collapse? Why are people without health insurance or the ability to pay for it willing to vote against healthcare proponents?

The answer to how and why so many of these voters – particularly on the evangelical side – so often seem to be voting against their own self-interests, even voting to tilt the playing field further against their near and long-term personal health and welfare is examined by University of Virginia psychology professor Jonathan Haidt (currently taking time to teach at NYU’s Stern School of Business; pictured above at a TED lecture), noted lecturer in his newly released book, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” He is known as a “moral foundations theorist,” looking for the underlying emotional vectors in mass political behavior as opposed to the traditional economic analyses.

According to Wikipedia, Dr. Haidt breaks these moral foundations into six groups:

1. Care for others, protecting them from harm. (He also referred to this dimension as Harm.)
2. Fairness, Justice, treating others equally.
3. Loyalty to your group, family, nation. (He also referred to this dimension as Ingroup.)
4. Respect for tradition and legitimate authority. (He also referred to this dimension as Authority.)
5. Purity or Sanctity, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions.
6. Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty.

The March 17^th New York Times gave Dr. Haidt an Op-Ed page to express his views. He is most certainly not without substantial critics, particularly in conservative America, but see if you find traction with his theories... or not. “Self-interest, political scientists have found, is a surprisingly weak predictor of people’s views on specific issues… Despite what you might have learned in Economics 101, people aren’t always selfish. In politics, they’re more often groupish. When people feel that a group they value — be it racial, religious, regional or ideological — is under attack, they rally to its defense, even at some cost to themselves. We evolved to be tribal, and politics is a competition among coalitions of tribes”

First look at the world from a liberal and then conservative-evangelical moralistic perspective: “The Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith once summarized the moral narrative told by the American left like this: ‘Once upon a time, the vast majority’ of people suffered in societies that were “unjust, unhealthy, repressive and oppressive.’ These societies were “reprehensible because of their deep-rooted inequality, exploitation and irrational traditionalism — all of which made life very unfair, unpleasant and short. But the noble human aspiration for autonomy, equality and prosperity struggled mightily against the forces of misery and oppression and eventually succeeded in establishing modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist, welfare societies.’ Despite our progress, ‘there is much work to be done to dismantle the powerful vestiges of inequality, exploitation and repression.’ This struggle, as Smith put it, ‘is the one mission truly worth dedicating one’s life to achieving.’… This is a heroic liberation narrative. For the American left, African-Americans, women and other victimized groups are the sacred objects at the center of the story. As liberals circle around these groups, they bond together and gain a sense of righteous common purpose

“Contrast that narrative with one that Ronald Reagan developed in the 1970s and ’80s for conservatism. The clinical psychologist Drew Westen summarized the Reagan narrative like this: ‘Once upon a time, America was a shining beacon. Then liberals came along and erected an enormous federal bureaucracy that handcuffed the invisible hand of the free market. They subverted our traditional American values and opposed God and faith at every step of the way.’ For example, ‘instead of requiring that people work for a living, they siphoned money from hard-working Americans and gave it to Cadillac-driving drug addicts and welfare queens.’ Instead of the ‘traditional American values of family, fidelity and personal responsibility, they preached promiscuity, premarital sex and the gay lifestyle’ and instead of ‘projecting strength to those who would do evil around the world, they cut military budgets, disrespected our soldiers in uniform and burned our flag.’ In response, ‘Americans decided to take their country back from those who sought to undermine it.’

“This, too, is a heroic narrative, but it’s a heroism of defense. In this narrative it’s God and country that are sacred — hence the importance in conservative iconography of the Bible, the flag, the military and the founding fathers. But the subtext in this narrative is about moral order. For social conservatives, religion and the traditional family are so important in part because they foster self-control, create moral order and fend off chaos. (Think of Rick Santorum’s comment that birth control is bad because it’s ‘a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.’) Liberals are the devil in this narrative because they want to destroy or subvert all sources of moral order.” NY Times.

The grassroots passions you see, from the left and the right, are heroic defenses of things sacred to each voting segment, and passion against all who oppose your most sacred beliefs is one of the core destroyers of willingness to compromise and a core accelerant of irreparable polarization. Passionate commitments to sacred beliefs are the most difficult to dislodge or to find harmonic balance. People are literally prepared to go down with the ship in the name of their cherished beliefs.

In his parting Op-Ed words, Haidt opines: “This is why we’ve seen the sudden re-emergence of the older culture war — the one between the religious right and the secular left that raged for so many years before the financial crisis and the rise of the Tea Party. When sacred objects are threatened, we can expect a ferocious tribal response. The right perceives a ‘war on Christianity’ and gears up for a holy war. The left perceives a ‘war on women’ and gears up for, well, a holy war… The timing could hardly be worse. America faces multiple threats and challenges, many of which will require each side to accept a ‘grand bargain’ that imposes, at the very least, painful compromises on core economic values. But when your opponent is the devil, bargaining and compromise are themselves forms of sacrilege.”

It is in these immutable and intransigent positions that nations collapse and fracture into new geographical boundaries, a process that shows up a century later in some bored student’s historical textbook. Is this beginning of the end for the United States as a political body? Does this suggest that the European Union cannot hold onto its original goals? Is there any process than can restore civility and the unity that sustains nationhood? Was Abraham Lincoln right that a “house divided against itself cannot stand”?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the real question is whether this polarization can be moderated to allow the United States of America to continue as a viable nation for the long term.