We've all heard of the moral majority and values voters. Somehow, somewhere we forgot that we are all value voters and that we all have a stake in morality. The conservative movement shrivelled a nation’s soul ending and breaking countless lives. While it might seem rather abstract to identify as the worst sin committed I feel that vast and possibly lasting damage has been done by the Republican abuse of the concept of morality. The destruction and perversion of concepts and the language that represents them takes away our ability to think like newspeak.
If a third world nation is bombed that is a moral issue. If the world fries because of greed that is a moral issue. If a nation starves and goes sick because of an embargo that is a moral issue. If people go hungry, if people have broken souls, if become objectified cogs in a system these are a moral issues. All the big issues of government are moral issues. Because morality has become about sex and culture conservatives can appeal to "values voters" with impunity even while they lie, steal and pervert the processes of democracy. I feel that an adulterated concept of morality is one of the reasons why we are so fucked up right now.
Conservativism reduces ethics to concern over likeness. Are they like me in their sexuality, religion and culture, good! Are they not like me? Let's punish them! It's a negative morality based on prohibition instead of generosity and ethical duty. It's about struggle between groups and disharmony; it's about worrying about the surface instead of the core. It's centred on the self and is about how alike others are to me instead of an outward stretching of the soul. Ultimately it's about status and power by conformity rather than altruism.