There is a common misconceptions amongst conservatives, especially the evangelical sort, that liberals are amoral. We all know that this assertion is untrue, but it is not unfounded. Liberals have a very different kind of morality than do conservatives. In this diary, I want to contrast the two sorts of morality.
I also want to make some attempts to find out how we can go about showing the legitimacy of liberal morality to conservatives. Ultimately, I think that conservative morality will not function in modern society and indeed does not function well at this point. It will only become less and less useful.
The fundamental difference between conservative morality and liberal morality is their roots. Conservative morality comes out of predetermined rules, be they religious or traditional. Liberal morality is based on reason that can be derived from pure philosophy or a religious doctrine.
Modern American conservatives fight against the homosexual agenda, because they believe that homosexual acts are sinful. Homosexual acts are sinful, because either conservatives believe that they have always been rejected by society, or they are banned by God. The conclusion is already there, and conservatives, out of necessary defense, will come up with rationales for why homosexual acts are bad for society.
Conservatives wish to defend existing social mores and tradition, because that is how they learned to be functioning members of society. They learned right from wrong by learning rules from their parents and other leaders in their community. A number of things are wrong, because that's how society has to function for conservatives. To a conservative, a child would not be able to become good person without learning the rules. Without those rules, the person is a moral deviant or freak.
Liberal morality's basis in reason makes it very, very different from conservative morality. Rules can exist, but they come out of reason. It is important to note at this point that liberal morality is not necessarily moral relativism. Liberal morality is often a form of moral absolutism, in that there is a fundamental belief that there is a right and a wrong. Liberals believe that murder is wrong, just like conservatives do, but for liberals, the reasoning for murder's immorality is more important. A conservative can easily tell you why murder is wrong, even outside of the need to follow rules, but that reasoning is more of an after-thought.
You cannot reason very much without basic assumptions, and liberals differ on those assumptions. I would like to give some examples of liberal morality foundations. The most obvious is Enlightenment reason. While there are different schools of thought in this founding assumption (Kant's deontology, Mill's utilitarianism, etc.), they all come out of pure thought.
Another founding assumption in American culture is Christian (or Jewish.) Liberal Christian morality differs from conservative Christian morality in that liberal Christians don't look at the Bible and see rules but instead see guidance for how to think about morality and justice. Right and wrong is not determined by God, but God's morality is based on fundamental truths of right and wrong. Conservative Christians criticize this thinking as non-Biblical, because it excludes sections of the Bible that are clearly rules-based. Liberal Christians have a number of responses, including the idea that God is constantly trying to get us to change and move beyond what we once were.
Less commonly, we can find people who base their liberal morality on other religious ideals, such as Budhism, Wicca, and the like. While they do are not necessarily mainstream, I think that such thinkers have important impact on modern liberal moralism. For example, those who prescribe to Wiccan thought often focus on nature and how we morally interact with nature. People following Eastern religions think about personal moral balance and our participation in the cycles of life and suffering.
For the most part, liberal morality and conservative morality come to the same conclusions about right and wrong, but their routes to those conclusions are different. Also, the concepts of how to get people to behave morally are very different. Conservatives have rules, so they expect there to be institutional laws dedicated to enforcing those rules. (Drug use is immoral, so we must arrest and punish all drug users.) Liberals have reasoning to get them to their conclusions, and thus their approach to the interaction of institutional laws is often very different. (Drug use is destructive to individuals, so we must take steps to prevent people from using drugs.)
How can we liberals teach our morality? I think that first of all, we can live our lives in a moral fashion, thus living as examples, but we should do that anyway. Furthermore, when conservatives perform immoral acts based on their own system of morality, we should point out the trouble. Think of the administration's condoning of torture and Alan Key's disowning of his own daughter.
I think that we should point out our own moral systems more often, and talk about its success in our own lives. We need to talk about how it works out better for our children, making them more thoughtful and moral in situations in which the pressure to follow the rules is absent. Think about all of the poor conservatives who go to college and go wild once they realize that their parents and church aren't there to police them.