The problem with having to waste my day at work is that I read excellent diaries on the trolley in the morning, and stew and ruminate and percolate all day but don't have time to comment on them. So once in a while, after I'm home and four fingers of JB green in, I just have to riff on them a little bit, even if I'm not able to do so as cogently and powerfully as Hunter.
((Srsly, this is one of the best things on dk this year. Do we have an annual award? "The Kozzy??"))
Hunter's comments about "Effective Crimes" were stirring, and they got me thinking about situational ethics, and what an important, rallying issue that has been to the far right for many, many years....
Hunter's post may even be more powerful than he realized, with just a bit of context:
When I was at Whitman college (a liberal arts college in Walla^2, a decidedly non-liberal town) a decade ago, I minored in education. I did my student teaching, but it ultimately didn't take--another story. But in those classes, we read a lot of theories of education, in part the better to arm and equip us to deal with the parents we would encounter. I haven't thought of those classes in years, but Hunter's post this morning brought them back to my mind.
Because, you see, we read about situational ethics a lot. Far right groups -- CWA, the Eagle Forum, FoF -- have published screed after screed after screed about the dread "Secular Humanist" agenda. The far-left, unionized, god-hating teachers* had an agenda of "Values education", using such horrific tools at the "Lifeboat game", the point of this vile game being not foster introspective reflection, but rather to cause children to dis-value life and embrace abortion and the rest of the godless agenda. Seriously: If there are fewer than a million Americans who have been denied quality education in whole or in part out of fear of the dread "lifeboat game," I would be surprised.
*Ah, memories. I was in school learning to be one with Bob Dole went to town on us. In the context of what's happened the past eight years, our outrage then seems almost...cute.
"Situation Ethics" It's a symptom of the "cultural disease" of godlessness that is destroying our nation. Because, in a that headspace, Benthamite utilitarianism is eeee-vil. Ethics can't be situational: "You have to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything." If Dr. Laura has taught us anything, it's that ethical dictums stand up to much more rigor when they rhyme.
There are things that are absolutely right, and things that are absolutely wrong. This is a basic principle for the right.
After Lakoff, we understand about Dobson's "strong father" paradigm. This is what makes a social safety net actively immoral -- because that kind of indulgence, no matter how bad the individual situation is absolutely wrong.
We can't have a sensible drug policy, treating a health issue like a health issue despite years of the alternative being an abject failure--there are some things that are absolutely wrong.
When it comes to civil rights, of course a fifth of the country is going to be denied basic rights the rest of us enjoy -- wrong is wrong.
If a fifteen-year-old girl is raped by her step-father, obviously she needs to have form signed by that same parent to make any decisions regarding it -- life is right, murder is wrong. No exception. No "situations."
A few nights ago, Jon Stewart said (rough quote) "If torture is immoral and not effective, easy. Moral and effective, find. It's one of each that's confusing."
But for the right, it shouldn't be. Not confusing at all.
Again, thank you, Hunter, for one of the best-written and most powerful posts of the year to date.
PS: Speaking of phones and buses--and this is in no way to denigrate David's time-consuming, detailed, excellent, informative work -- "Day in Congreff" maybe could use a fold.