Why the Left Has No "Ethical Vocabulary"

[BridgeTheGap]

(interesting comments follow at the UTNE site)

Christine Smallwood's interview with historian Tony Judt in The Nation ended with a much-too-brief exchange about religion and the left. Here it is:

Smallwood: I come from a very religious background, and it seems to me that people on the left are so embarrassed about the language of morality that they've ceded the ground to the right.

Judt: I totally agree. I think it's a catastrophe for both sides. What it means for the left is that it's got no ethical vocabulary. What it means for the right is that it smugly supposes that it's got a monopoly on values. Both sides are completely wrong. There used to be a tradition of left-wing ethics, Orwellian if you like, or pre-Orwell. I'd like to say parenthetically that I come out of a sort of secular dissenting Jewish background, but one with some of the same thoughts of the old dissenting churches—Christian, Jewish—of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which there was a natural correspondence of social values and ethical criteria. And the divorce between them has been one of the disastrous results of the last half-century. I'd love to contribute to re-forming that link.

More! I want more!

http://www.utne.com/Spirituality/Why-the-Left-Has-No-Ethical-Vocabulary.aspx?utm_content=05.14.10+Great+Writing&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

[SheilaT]

1. I can only Speak for myself

as someone who is on the left and does not participate in conventional religion or religious beliefs. I am actually deeply ethical but I don't find it necessary to go around proclaiming my moral superiority. Nor do I feel compelled to insist others see the world exactly as I do. And I don't go around judging others, especially those who don't follow my own particular beliefs.

And that's really the difference between the left and the right.

[Igel]

14. Of course you can only speak for yourself.

But I know a lot of people on the left that are just as preachy as those on the right.

Except the left doesn't preach and demand obeisance to a God (not necessarily, at least) or a church. But it has crimes and thought crimes every bit as much as Xianity does.

Social justice, environmental justice, numerous other kinds of justice. Not only can't you discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, etc., etc., but you shouldn't even *think* in racist/sexist/etc. terms. Environmentalism, views of America's place in the world and how international relations should be ordered, etc., etc. The list goes on for a while.

These are moral and ethical topics, and if you don't abide by them in some circles you get the same reactions as getting up in the middle of a revival meeting during altar call and reciting the shahada (in English, of course). Or the same look a friend gave me when my wife asked for differences between my (former) church and his--and I responded that my church was strictly non-trinitarian.

The left has a very rich vocabulary, just not one that's invoked in all of its lushness in most cases. Often epithets shallowly rooted in fact are handily thrown around, but nobody cares about the "shallowly rooted" part. Why? Because they describe less fact than judgment--the opposition isn't just mistaken, it's evil. Specifying the precise nature of the evil isn't necessary, nor does it need to be proven.

[darkstar3]

2. Of course this is false.

The left is ethical, often more ethical than the right, and we have every ability to talk about it. The difference is that we don't scream constantly about Jesus in order to cover our asses. (for the most part.)

[zipplewrath]

5. They were speaking more of vocabularly

The right has a vocabularly they are comfortable using to express their ethics and morality. The left has "lost" that to a great degree, is what they are saying. Not that the left doesn't HAVE ethics or morality, just no way to express it in a common language. Especially in the modern media sense of the slogan/sound bite/30 second commercial.

It would be even more illustrative to discuss the sense of "coded language" the right has for all manner of ethics based discussions. The right has a long history of this kind of language, everything from "states rights" to "real American" that has a use of expressing more ugly toughts with "unchallengable" language.

[darkstar3]

6. But is the language used by the old Moral Majority

truly the language of ethics? Is there even such a thing?

[zipplewrath]

8. Strangely, there is

And no, the vast majority of the Moral Majority was completely ignorant on the issue of ethics. Some of the earliest study in the history of formalized education in the world was about ethics. We can trace it all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. It surely predates them as well. But how many of those folks you think studied Plato, much less St. Augustine.

[Warren Stupidity]

9. I agree with everything this poster said.

Should the left take the Sandanista path back to power? Is that the sort of 'ethics and morality' we should voice?

[Jim__]

3. I agree. I want more.

I wish they would have gone a little bit deeper into that issue. Vocabulary is extremely important; and, in the US today, the left seems to be losing the vocabulary war.

I would like to have a little more detail about what they meant.

[socialist_n_TN]

4. We probably need to bring back

social justice as a moral catch phrase. EVERY religion has a strong vein of social justice teachings.

Also, if someone calls themselves "Christian", the first question out of our mouths should be "Define Christian?" It would get them to fighting amongst themselves as it has for the last 2000 years. Divide and conquer.

[zipplewrath]

7. Nah

That's too easy. "Believes in the divinity of Christ, they are the son of God and our savior". Now, start asking if certain faiths are "christian" and watch the fur fly. Top of the fir flying list are Mormons and Catholics. Always fun to when you ask about the "status" of jews in the Kingdom of God (the old, "can jew go to heaven" schtick).

[struggle4progress]

10. "The left has no ethical vocabulary" is simply nonsense:

it assumes, first, that "the left" describes some clear and definite political group; and then it assumes one can make a factual sweeping abstract statement about "the left"

Just about every serious political fight that I've ever been involved with had an explicit moral dimension. The fight against apartheid simply boiled down to "This is wrong," after which everyone did a lot of careful technical work to understand the system, in order to combat it, or in order to explain it more accurately to the unconvinced -- who almost inevitably themselves said aloud "This is wrong," once they understood the situation. The same comment applies to the genocidal wars in Central America

"Wrong" is a moral concept. "It's wrong to drop napalm on Vietnamese peasants who haven't harmed us" was an idea that most Americans could understand without difficulty in the Vietnam war era, even if ideological issues (like the Domino theory), or social forces (associated with our militarized economy) made it difficult to the war. Elaborate moral theorizing is seldom required and seldom effective: given the facts, people very often reach exactly the same moral conclusion

[Angry Dragon]

11. That all seems well and good

but how do you talk to someone that has all the answers and says that is what god wants?? Its god's will??

Good journal on the home page right now by Time for change http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/557
that deals with this in greater detail.

A lot of people on the right only want to follow so they listen to the becks, their religious leaders, their party heads and come away with non facts and just things that make it okay to abuse others in the name of morality.

[struggle4progress]

12. As a general rule, I do not hope to reach everyone, nor do I hope to change

everyone's mind. Not being an authoritarian myself, I have little insight into the mindset of the authoritarians, and I do not expect to convert those who are thoroughly dedicated to that mindset. Many people, however, are persuadable by facts if the conversation stays on point, and plenty of people are willing to make up their own minds, given the chance

[trotsky]

13. The big problem I have with this...

is that most of the same people who call for this kind of thing naturally want these "ethics" and "morality" to be coming from a RELIGION.

Oh, sometimes they pretend like they're inclusive, just like the right does, by referring to Christian/Jewish or the overused and trite "Judeo-Christian" descriptor, but there is no mention at all of minority religions or certainly of those dirty, filthy non-believers who by the way caused all these problems when Madalyn O'Hair forced all children to stop praying in school with her machine gun.