This is part 15 of my “Think! Of God and Government” debate series with Christian author Andrew Murtagh. Read my latest post and Andrew’s reply.
Hi Andrew,
I think Haidt’s work on the five foundations of morality has a lot of validity, although I’d argue that the conservative, “beehive” values tend to work better in smaller and more homogeneous societies. Large, multicultural civilizations, by their nature, need to rely first and foremost on the “contractual” values of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity to mediate clashes of interest. Those are the “common currencies” that all human beings share and largely agree on, whereas beliefs about who constitutes the in-group, which are the authorities who should be respected, and what acts are sacred or taboo all vary enormously among cultures.
I’d also suggest that in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity are the moral principles of scarcity. If you’re, say, a tribe of hunter-gatherers surrounded by hostile rivals, or a village of subsistence farmers dependent on the weather, there really is a need for people to pull together for the sake of survival. Under those circumstances, there isn’t a lot of breathing room for people to go their own way and do their own thing.
Luckily, we’ve grown past that need! Compared to past eras, the society you and I live in is one of immense abundance. We’re unbelievably fortunate to have been born into a time where there is room for individuality, for experimentation, and for marching to the beat of your own drum. And that’s fortunate, because I think the best society is the one that gives people the greatest possible freedom to seek out their own vision of the good life, so long as it doesn’t interfere with others doing the same. Who could disagree with that?
On that note, let me offer a few closing thoughts on choice.
If you don’t believe abortion should be legal, there’s ample opportunity to make your case for that. But the backdoor attempt to ban it by putting ever-greater burdens on women, while claiming it’s all about concern for those women’s health, demonstrates transparent bad faith. You decry ghastly quacks like Kermit Gosnell – well, that’s the kind of bottom-feeder who arises when safe, legal abortions are impossible to come by. If we go much further down this path, we’ll see a return to the bad old days of coat hangers and women dying of septicemia and hemorrhage. It’s already happening in Texas, and it could well get worse.
If you actually care about women’s health, the way to show it is by ensuring women have the ability to take care of themselves – or as you put it, “allow them the means to make good decisions”. Whatever your feelings on the matter, it’s no coincidence that the vast majority of people opposed to legal abortion are also opposed to comprehensive sex education, access to contraception, and even paid family leave – the very things that make it possible to make responsible decisions about sex and pregnancy. For them, it’s not about safeguarding anyone’s life or health, it’s just a way of punishing women for having unapproved sex.
And it’s not hard to see where they get it from. Misogynistic fear and loathing of women’s sexuality is a prominent and obvious theme in many holy books, including the Bible. Just look at the New Testament passage (1 Timothy 2:11-15) that blames the downfall of humanity on a woman tempting a man, and commands that women can be saved only if they keep quiet, obey the commands of men and subserviently bear children. Two millennia of virulent sexism and the systematic exclusion of women from every position of religious or political power have come from passages like this. The way I see it, religion has a long list of crimes to answer and atone for before it ever again dares to tell women what is or isn’t necessary for their health.
It sets a bad precedent, too, if the government can use regulation to harass something into nonexistence that it would be illegal to ban outright. Would you like it if the government wielded that same tactic against churches? Imagine the burdens we could put on religion with a slow drip-feed of one burdensome law after another: mandatory state-imposed waiting periods and in-person counseling from an atheist before someone could attend church, laws that allow people to sue their pastors if they don’t feel a sense of inner peace and fulfillment, government-written scripts that the minister was forced to read before every service (“Warning! The government has determined that belief in the contents of this sermon may endanger your life, health and ability to think critically”). Imagine if you had to travel hundreds of miles and take time off work and childcare just to attend the church of your choice.
This gets to the point about the supposed inefficiency of government. The fact is that government is often very efficient at doing what it sets out to do, which isn’t always what the stated purpose of a law is.
When you see a law or a rule that seems ridiculous, needlessly complex, or riddled with loopholes, it’s rarely because politicians are idiots who can’t just write a law that says what they mean. It’s because some high-powered corporate lobby or political pressure group that influences legislation is demanding it for their own purposes. (One of my favorite examples: One of the big lobbies opposing simplification of the tax code are the accounting firms that sell tax-preparation software.)
This gets at one of the bigger problems with democracy, which is that a shockingly large number of people don’t vote, don’t watch the news, don’t pay attention – or if they do vote, it’s based on the most superficial of generalities. That means that laws often get made by the relatively small number of people who do care and do show up – for better or for worse.
There’s an inherent collective-action problem here. If a law will cost me and everyone else fifty cents a year in extra taxes, I won’t have a strong motivation to care about that trivial sum. But if all those pennies flow to one company, for them it’s 150 million dollars a year, and you can bet they’ll fight with everything they have to get it passed!
If there’s anything that’s the flaw in our political system, it’s this. It’s too easy for pressure groups, be they corporate or religious, to capture the loyalty of politicians and influence laws in ways that are detrimental to everyone else. James Madison wrote about his hope that differing factions would balance each other out and prevent this outcome, but history shows that that rarely works out as well as we might hope.
Whether this is a solvable problem, I don’t know. We can both agree, I’m sure, that the First Amendment and its wall of separation between church and state has largely prevented one kind of societal capture by pressure groups, namely theocracy. But that’s just one instance of a much bigger general problem.
I don’t have any easy answers for this. I’m inclined to think that there’s ultimately no substitute for an informed and politically engaged citizenry, even if that will always be more of an ideal than a reality. At the very least, this argues for a robust public education system and a vigorous free press. But this analysis suggests another possible answer: perhaps reducing inequality may be a good thing for its own sake. A more sharply progressive income tax would be one way to do it. What if we brought back the 90% top tax bracket of the Eisenhower era?
I’m not saying there should be perfect equality of outcome, because people do need a motivation to work and to strive. But it’s plausible that allowing any one individual or group to accumulate too much wealth and power relative to everyone else is harmful to democracy. It gives them the ability to sway the democratic process toward unjust outcomes.
The one-person, one-vote principle of democracy is a check on excessive personal ambition and too-radical change. It requires people to compromise and build consensus rather than to impose their will on others. Maybe that’s a moral principle we should consider extending beyond just the ballot box, and try building a society where everyone has a real and meaningful voice in how they’re treated and what the laws should be. That could well be the path toward a better and more just world for everyone, regardless of whether you’re atheist or theist, male or female, or any other distinction you’d care to name. I admit it’s a bold speculation, but I think it’s one that’s worth exploring!