On Christmas Eve a woman named Bunny from Kansas called C-Span to say that she was so disappointed and mad over the Senate passing the health insurance reform bill that she had taken down her Christmas tree. When asked about her reasons she explained that the America is supposed to be one nation under God, but it isn't; that the bill would pit young people against seniors; and something about how the government supporting nonprofit hospices (or hospitals) is tantamount to "genocide against seniors".
I probably would have missed this news item had it not been reposted on the Huffington Post website along with a video of the actual call. The story garnered comments from HP readers who thought that Bunny was stupid, silly, ignorant, ungrateful, misinformed, muddled, insane, and other not-so-nice adjectives that filled 37 pages. Liberals and progressive seem to find cheer in making fun of representatives of the "crazy right".
As a progressive news addict, the condescending comments about Bunny's moral outrage reminded me of Paul Krugman's remark that among those who are opposed to this legislation are members of, "the crazy right, the tea party and death panel people — a lunatic fringe that is no longer a fringe but has moved into the heart of the Republican Party". It seems that liberals and progressives are prepared to use ad hominem arguments against their political adversaries no less than those on the right. It is comforting for people on both wings to believe that one can dismiss certain political opinions by simply calling those who hold them bad names.
Many liberals and progressives are also mad and disappointed about the Senate bill, but for different reasons. I am myself outraged about it because I see it as another capitulation to corporate interests. But, in the end, I agree with Krugman and would vote for the bill, bad as it is, because it is better in certain respects than the status quo. Liberals and progressives, you see, are trained to respect rational argument and will generally go with the heads rather than with their guts, even though their guts are screaming "This thing is total fucking bullshit!"
Still, it is rather perplexing why Bunny reacted in the way that she did. There have been several interesting studies of the human moral response in recent years done by moral psychologists, experimental moral philosophers, cognitive scientists and other researchers who have been trying to understand why people respond to moral issues in the ways that they do. One of the most interesting of these studies is by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt who argues that human beings are innately predisposed to judge moral questions in terms of five distinct value foundations:
1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.
3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions). (www.moral foundations.org)
Haidt hypothesizes that liberals tend to use the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity scale mostly, while conservatives place greater emphasis on ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. So rather than simply dismissing people whose basic moral values differ from your own as people who "just don't get it", a more scientific approach is to recognize that liberals and conservatives emphasize different moral values, and this explains their differing moral responses.
Appealing as this theory is, I do not think it explains Bunny's reaction to the Senate passing the health care reform bill. First of all, if Bunny's reaction was based on loyalty and respect for authority she should have simply accepted the outcome as the flawed result of our democratic institutions. Perhaps we don't agree with everything our government does, but it is our government after all, and we should respect its authority and our traditions, including majority rule. If Haidt is right, why weren't Bunny, or Fox News, or conservative bloggers saying things like this?
Second, when asked why she disliked the Senate bill, Bunny said that she thought it was divisive between the young and the old and that it was tantamount to genocide against seniors. This sounds a lot like saying she thought it would be unfair to young people and that it would be harmful to old people; invoking both the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations thought to be used primarily by liberals.
Third, if Bunny really had a lot of respect for religious traditions, she would not have let national political news ruin her Christmas observance, would she? Wouldn't a real Christian conservative carry on with her Kansas holiday plans despite what was going on in Washington? What does this political nonsense matter next to the birth of Our Savior?
Perhaps Bunny is just a nut, after all. But, on the other hand, perhaps something else is going on that Haidt's theory does not explain. One possible explanation is that Bunny is just very misinformed about what the bill says. But is she? The bill (if it ever passes) will require young people who have not purchased private health insurance to buy it or pay a penalty. Seniors with Medicare would be exempt from this requirement, so it does impose different burdens and costs on the young and the old. Young adults who are employed are also paying for Medicare and Social Security, while not deriving any benefits from these programs, and they are in effect now being told that they must pay for their grandparents' government-provided medical care and also contribute to the profit margins of private health insurance companies. If you think about it, this does seems rather unfair, particularly if one expects that the Medicare trust fund will run out of money before one gets to age 66.
But "genocide against seniors"? This does sound like Bunny has been misled by the government death panels campaign that was recently awarded the "
Whopper for 2009" prize. This Big Whopper was the result of a carefully constructed media campaign intended to misinform the segment of the American electorate who think that Sarah Palin is a saint and believe that Fox News really is "fair and balanced" into believing that health care reform will result on government-mandated euthanasia for seniors. Rubbish, of course, but why do so many people seem to believe it even though it has been thoroughly exposed and debunked as the big lie that it is? Well maybe it is because a lot of people fear totalitarian governments like those in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and Maoist China that actually did murder millions of their own citizens in the name of social progress. Many people fear big governments more than they fear big businesses because the history books reveal that the former have murdered more people than the latter.
So maybe Bunny and the people she represents are not so crazy after all. Bunny cares about justice and harm to the vulnerable, but she has her own analysis of what is most likely to produce injustice and harm. Perhaps her analysis of this legislation is based on some factual misinformation, and perhaps her reading of history is selectively biased, but she is not a lunatic. Nor is she operating with a value system that is very different from yours and mine.
One hard case does not, of course, disprove Haidt's theory, which does help to explain some kinds of variations among moral responses:
While the five foundations are universal, cultures build upon each to varying degrees. Imagine five adjustable slides on a stereo equalizer that can be turned up or down to produce different balances of sound. An equalizer preset like 'Show Tunes' will turn down the bass and 'Hip Hop' will turn it up, but neither turns it off. Similarly, societies modulate the dimension of moral emotions differently, creating a distinctive cultural profile of moral feeling, judgment and justification. If you're a sharia devotee ready to stone adulterers and slaughter infidels, you have purity and in-group pushed up to 11. PETA members, who vibrate to the pain of other species, have turned in-group way down and harm way up.
[Quoted by Jacobs, Tom (2009). "Conservatives Live in a Different Moral Universe – And Here‘s Why It Matters."– http://www.alternet.org/story/138303, April 25 2009].
Perhaps Haidt is right that some people have some of the values on these moral scales tuned differently than others, rather like the slides on an equalizer. But we are still listening to the same music. It is just that some of us like it. Others don't.
So the next time someone expresses his or her moral outrage over something that you find benign or even agreeable, think about it a little. Avoid name-calling as a substitute for understanding what they are trying to say. You still might end up disagreeing with them, but at least you won't end up thinking that they come from another planet or are deluded miscreants who "just don't get it".
Instead, try asking them, "What's the it?"
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
Frankly, they are getting more than I expected them to get.
I can understand the reaction of the right (include all the ad hominems you want toward that pathetic group)...but the people I consider particularly destructive are the progressives who are throwing this hissy fit because they think "all or nothing" makes sense.
Our country is polarized. Any change...any improvement...will be incremental...and the increments will more than likely be miniscule.
Like you, Morton, I am pretty much saying: Live with it. This is the way things are.