Three people are dead after a terrorist invaded a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado on Friday and held patients and staff hostage for five hours; the sixth terrorist attack on a PP clinic since July. After turning himself in, the killer raged against the organization to justify his behavior.
Who are these people? And why do they think the way they do?
Pick up a copy of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2013) and learn about the essential differences between liberals and conservatives. Psychologist, Jonathan Haidt studies the moral foundations of politics and why we adopt the attitudes that form our values.
He asks us to focus on the emotive centers of the brain as biological adaptations, necessary for human society to exist. Originally, he and his colleagues identified five moral foundations that evolved as adaptive behavior, but by the time he published The Righteous Mind they had added a sixth.
Think of these moral attitudes as pillars holding up a building. Since they serve as foundations, Haidt and his colleagues call their concept Moral Foundation Theory.
The six pillars are:
- (a) harm/care (strong empathy and care for the most vulnerable)
- (b) fairness/reciprocity (life liberty and justice for all)
- (c) in-group/loyalty (tribalism, patriotism, nationalism)
- (d) authority/respect (mechanisms for managing social rank, tempered by the obligation of superiors to protect and provide for subordinates.
- (e) purity/sanctity (related to the evolution of disgust, that makes carnality degrading, unbridled sexuality repulsive and renunciation as noble).
The newest foundation pillar is: (f) liberty/oppression (related to the desire for equality; also the distinction between freedom from (oppression); and freedom to (pursue wealth.)
Evidently, liberals give priority to only three: (a) (b) and (f), while conservatives value all six but certainly not in equal proportions, since purity/sanctity (e) seem to outweigh several of the others.
This pillar is about sacredness and how sexual behavior violates one’s relationship with God. Christianity isn’t the only religion that wants renunciation of the flesh as preparation for meeting the sacred, but it’s the religion that most conservative Americans identify with.
Feminists have been arguing for over a century that Judeo-Christian principles about sex are designed to control women. The so-called double standard has always operated from a belief that “good girls” were not sexual until marriage, leading some feminists to denounce marriage altogether as a set-up; a trap, designed to keep women confined and contained.
St. Augustine knew about this. He went from profligate to celibate. As he slowly accepted Christianity, his obsession with sex was the one great obstacle. “Give me chastity,” he prayed, and then famously, “... but not yet!”
Christianity teaches that carnality is demeaning and corrupting; lascivious; prurient and animal-like. Sexual intercourse for its own sake is repulsive.
If contraception is not used during sex, pregnancy is, indeed, often the consequence. But, hey! what if you plan your pregnancies? What if you engage in sex for its own sake; for the sheer pleasure of orgasm; for the intimacy it brings to a relationship? What then, if there is unintended pregnancy? Conservative Americans think – consciously or unconsciously – that pregnancy and the subsequent burden of child rearing must be the penalty.
This is why liberals detest the hypocrisy of many so-called Pro Life advocates. If they were really ”pro life” they would vote for programs that support children: e.g., free school lunches, a decent minimum wage or the Paycheck Fairness Act. They would want a system that helps every little kid - who never asked to be born – to have a chance in life. But they don’t support these programs because Pro Lifers aren’t really pro-life, but pro-pregnancy and pro-birth. In short: pro-consequences. They believe that there must be consequences to the sexual act.
(I firmly believe this is why so many conservatives hate gays and the LGBTQ movement. There are no biological consequences to homosexual sexuality.)
And so conservatives are filled with loathing. They hate people who engage in sex without risking consequences. And they hate Planned Parenthood because it encourages women – married and unmarried - to seek contraception. And because it gives abortions to all women who want to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
Most intelligent and well-informed conservatives (oxymoron?) know that PP does not sell aborted baby parts, but many of them hide behind this absurd and corrupted claim to give legitimacy to their righteous anger. They pretend this unsubstantiated rumor is valid so they can take the high road of morality.
If Jonathan Haidt is right about conservative moral foundations, it is not likely that liberal arguments are going to change hearts and minds. The terrorist attack in Colorado was the result of a toxic mentality that’s been building for months, inspired by hateful rhetoric from anti-women’s health activists.
What kind of morality is that?