The eCrozier

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. – James Madison

Well, we’re not angels, in case you haven’t noticed. Neither the political Left nor the political Right in our culture truly takes this into account in their moral approaches to making policy. The work of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues has shown quite compellingly that the same basic moral foundations shape both the Left and Right. It’s just that they assign greater or lesser importance to some rather than others. Haidt contends that the Left values compassion and fairness over the Right’s higher concern for loyalty and purity. This doesn’t mean that the Right doesn’t care about compassion and fairness. Clearly they do. It’s just that they care more about loyalty and purity. Equally, it doesn’t mean that the Left doesn’t care about loyalty and purity. They do, but just not as much as the Right does. In other words, when faced with making policy, the Left and Right tend to lean on their preferred moral foundations.

We can find this enormously helpful as way to avoid demonizing people who disagree with us. Compassion, fairness, loyalty, and purity are wonderful virtues we’d all hope everyone inculcated. It’s just that some of us prioritize them differently. With all this in mind, I believe both the political Left and the political Right fail miserably in their anthropological assumptions. Neither take into adequate consideration that we humans are not angels. Differently put, neither provides an intelligible account for the human propensity to mess up things up, which the Bible simply calls “sin.”

Each gets it half right. The Left has a higher view of human sin when it comes to individual abuses of wealth and power in the private sector. They’re wary of deregulated markets and lax environmental regulation, because they believe that left to the their own devices, people’s greed will trump the common good. The Right believes that when humans are left to their own devices, the invisible hand of the market will help them act virtuously, so little regulation is needed. Experience proves that the Left is correct.

The Right has a higher view of human sin when it comes to the abuses of government in relationship to the liberties of individuals. They’re justifiably concerned with what happens when human beings act in large groups, like governments, with diminished concern for how the individual’s rights are affected. The Left assumes that government, since it is “by the people,” will act virtuously. Experience proves the Right is correct.

The Left and the Right could both learn from each other’s flawed understanding of human nature. If Haidt is correct, and I believe he is, the Left and Right will usually revert to their preferred moral foundations, while discounting, but not rejecting their less preferred foundations. Good public policy, then, would take into account the assumptions proceeding from the preferred moral foundations of both the Left and the Right. It would also need to take into account the blind spots of both when it comes to their unbalanced account of the human propensity to mess things up. Don’t hold your breath until the Left and the Right admit this to one another, because you’ll pass out.

+Scott