Conservative vs Liberal

Why is the political conflict between liberals and conservatives (which goes on in one form or another throughout the world) so intractable?

It is widely understood that liberal political philosophies are characterised by a focus on individual liberties and equality, while conservative political philosophies primarily stem from one of two attitudes: a drive to uphold tradition (which can be termed social conservatism), and a desire to give as little money as possible to government (fiscal conservatism). In both cases, what is usually denoted is not so much a clearly defined ethical position so much as a broadly constituted political position. Yet any political belief also has an ethical dimension.

The relationship between ethics and politics bears some brief examination before we consider the specifics of the liberal-conservative divide. On the one hand, there is a widespread intuitive appreciation that ethics is intended or claimed to underlie politics, and on the other there is an equally widespread cynicism that claims that politics is wholly divorced from ethics. I might assert that the former conclusion is based around the relationship of the electorate to ethics (expressed in the idea that 'we vote what we believe'), while the latter is drawn from the relationship of the politicians to ethics (which I express in the idea that 'all politicians are weasels'). There is less of a disconnect here than it might at first seem – in the battlefield of politics, the forces amass beneath an ethical banner but the acts of the warriors must be focussed on the conflict.

An interesting recent attempt to understand the liberal-conservative divide can be found in the work of Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues, who have researched the psychological roots of morality and political ideology. Moral foundations theory is the result of this study, an attempt to identify common dimensions behind beliefs concerning morality. Haidt's research has produced a model of five moral foundations:

1. Harm/care: the desire to care for others and avoid harm, which underlies the virtues of kindness, gentleness and the desire to nurture.

2. Fairness/reciprocity: the basis for concepts of justice, autonomy and individual rights.

3. Ingroup/loyalty: the force of collective identity which underlies the virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group.

4. Authority/respect: the need to defer to legitimate authority and have respect for tradition which underlies the virtues of leadership and the duty of the follower.

5. Purity/sanctity: arising from the emotion of disgust, and the concept of contamination, which underlies the striving for a more elevated and noble way of life summed up in the idea that 'the body is a temple'.

(You can test how you score on these five measures by taking a test at YourMorals.org).

Haidt's research has demonstrated a consistent pattern behind the liberal-conservative divide in the United States. It transpires that people who identify as strongly liberal are happy to endorse statements relating to the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations, but they largely reject those concerned with ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Conversely, those who identify as strongly conservative endorse statements related to all five foundations more or less equally.

This is an interesting perspective on the political divide since, contrary to the way it is usually conceived, both parties share a common grounding in terms of fairness and the avoidance of harm. The conflict arises in the context of the relationship of the individual to the group: liberal beliefs stress autonomy in a way which comes into conflict with the sense of loyalty and duty to the group which holds an important role among those who hold conservative beliefs.

Yet there is an irony here: while people who identify as liberal may largely reject statements concerning ingroup loyalties, the psychological forces behind those groups still apply to them. Vehement liberals in the United States demonise their conservative opponents just as forcefully (and unfairly) as their political enemies. This kind of behaviour is explored by Henri Tajfel and John Turner's social identity theory, which claims that we all assume particular identities (including religious, political and sexual identities such as Christian, Buddhist, atheist; liberal, conservative; gay, straight, bisexual) and having done so we feel a natural kinship with those groups, which in turn tends to lead to a bias against different or opposing groups. When opposing groups publicly decry each other, this hostility naturally becomes more entrenched.

I believe the conservative-liberal conflict in the United States and elsewhere can be boiled down to two battlegrounds: the group versus the individual, and the welfare state versus the fortress state. In stressing individual autonomy, the archetypal liberal celebrates diversity and personal freedom in a manner which seems to the conservative to be threatening because it involves an alliance with many identity groups, rather than the sole support of their own identity group. Similarly, the stereotypical (social) conservative upholds traditional conceptions of the group (and the nation in particular) which is abominated by the liberal on account of its expectation and requirement of deference to leaders (which stands in opposition to the concept of personal autonomy) and the absence of obligation to other groups (which runs counter to liberal concepts of fairness and justice) .

The conflict over the purpose of the state, on the other hand, occurs primarily between the liberal and the fiscal conservative. In pursuit of greater equality and the avoidance of harm, many liberals believe the state should pursue its duty of care by setting up a welfare state which provides various support mechanisms at the expense of the taxpayers. Fiscal conservatives object to paying their money into the state for redistribution in this way – yet bizarrely, the majority of conservatives in the United States are perfectly happy to fund the military at great expense to the taxpayers. The desire to protect the ingroup leads to this need to set up a fortress state – not necessarily by force of arms and attempts at foreign pacification (as in the US) but more commonly by control of immigration. The goal is the same: to 'protect' their identity group (their conception of their nation).

The intractability of these disputes has a certain historical momentum that is hard to overcome, and is further ingrained by self-justifying narratives that demonise the opposition. Consider, for instance, that most liberals in the United States cannot understand why vast numbers of economically impoverished individuals vote for Republicans. Haidt raises this point and explains it in terms of the latter three foundations of his theory. But it is in no way logical for low-income workers to support a party which will tax them more severely and distribute this money primarily among entirely different socio-economic groups elsewhere in the country. If one escapes the narrative of the welfare state, it severely reduces the appeal of voting Democrat, just as the eschewal of the narrative of the fortress state decreases the sense in voting Republican.

The so-called “culture wars” in the United States rest not only in a failure for each camp to understand the perspective of the other, but in an inability to apply their own values to their political opponents. If people with liberal beliefs value autonomy and diversity, this should extend to defending the cultural rights of their conservative opponents; if people with conservative values are truly loyal to their country they must extend respect to all their fellow citizens, even those who have opposing political beliefs. The narratives required to support this conciliation already exist in the foundations of the nation itself – all that is needed is a willingness to return to the spirit of a Republic founded on a commitment to liberty and justice for all.

Comments

[Peter Crowther]

Chris, are there not "fiscal liberals" and "social liberals" in the same way that there are "fiscal conservatives" and "social conservatives", thereby giving at least a 2-dimensional political battleground rather than just a simplistic left/right? I'd argue that having just one kind of "liberal" is as misleading as having just "casual" and "hardcore" gamers.

For example, typical political tests show me as socially *incredibly* liberal and fiscally middle-of-the-road (wanting to support neither a massive military nor a welfare state apparently makes me middle-of-the-road - hmmm). This drops me firmly into the "Libertarian" camp, which isn't necessarily "liberal" in any normal sense.

I'll look at YourMorals.org when not on a client site.

[Peter Crowther]

Hrm. That 5-axis survey really doesn't deal well with me. Scores: Harm 0.8, fairness 0.7, and the other 3 axes all zero (all measured on a scale [0,6]). The pattern matches Liberal better than Conservative, but none well.

[Chris]

Peter: there are of course many positions beyond the poles... This piece isn't attempting to provide a universally applicable model but rather to explore the key tensions in US politics. (Conservative beliefs in particular fragment into dozens of sub-camps if examined in detail).

Perhaps I could have disclaimed this point more clearly in the prose.

As for the survey not dealing with you well - does any survey deal with you well? ;) You register on the two "liberal" axes and not on any of the "conservative" axes, so what's the problem here exactly? Haidt's model works fine in the context of US citizens; it's applicability outside of this context is open to conjecture, I suppose.

[Peter Crowther]

what's the problem here exactly?

Merely that three of their five suggested foundations of morality appear not to be at all relevant to me, and the other two appear to be mildly relevant at best. This may simply be because my views are a long way away from norms.

I should find Haidt's full analysis - I want to see more statistical measures on those axes than a simple mean. The graphical presentation is compelling, but some information about standard deviations, confidence intervals and test power would be more so!

[Chris]

Peter: the papers are out there - track 'em down! But on the whole, from everything I know about you, I wouldn't be surprised if you "blow the curve on this one". You are, I'm pleased to say, a very unique and interesting person.

Take care!

[Benjamin D. Steele]

I'd really like to see more research on this.

It seems odd that liberals don't share certain values, but conservatives supposedly hold all equally. My gut sense is that there might be bias in the testing. For example, why isn't "questioning authority" a moral value? In that case, liberals would have that value and conservatives wouldn't. Why are some of the values specifically defined in the direction of conservatism?

Before I could trust the conclusions of Haidt's study and analysis, I'd want to do more research. I'm wondering if it has been confirmed by further research. And I wonder if has been correlated to other models (MBTI, FFM, Boundary Types, etc).

[Chris]

Benjamin: I doubt correlating with personality models would work, because the key factors are cultural and not personal. An ISFP in Myers-Briggs, for instance, would almost certainly have values dictated by where they grew up.

What you see as a conservative bias in the formation of the moral foundations model is more likely the result of Haidt et al building the model from their observations. (It's clear to me that Haidt has a strong liberal bias - but he's reporting on other people's ethical foundations, not his own).

In my judgement "questioning authority" does not constitute much of a moral value; if it did, then it would imply that the questioning of authority has inherent moral value - irrespective of *what* was actually being questioned. It would make a combination of doubt and rebelliousness into a moral value. If neither the virtue of the authority being questioned, the rights implied nor the outcomes produced are considered, it's no longer much of a moral consideration! :)

If one looks at why a liberally minded person might reject authority in any given situation, Haidt's claim (I am presuming) is that such an objection would be founded upon issues of harm/care or fairness. Thus it is the nature of the liberal ethic to be willing to challenge the in group or source of authority in the pursuit of less harm, greater care or increased fairness. This is the essential driver of the political conflict from the liberal side - and neither side truly appreciates how it looks from the other perspective, which only deepens the divide.

I don't know of any independent follow-up to Haidt's work yet, but I keep looking. :)

Thanks for your comment!

[Mitchellkrieger]

Hasn't history been a movement up the ladder from #5 towards #1? As recently as 50 years ago, the idea of an African-American President would have been unthinkable (or for that matter a Mormon). Civilization has been a gradual movement towards the idea of caring, respect, and justice. We shudder at the Holocaust now, but millions of Germans participated willingly because they valued #3-5. The Golden Rule is still new and will remain so until we all place the most weight on caring and justice.

[Chris]

Mitchellkrieger: thanks for sharing your views on this topic!

"Hasn't history been a movement up the ladder from #5 towards #1?"

Only from a liberal perspective which values the top two more than the bottom three! :) You can project this story, but it's misleading since (3) and (4) are considerably older than (5), and (1) is a fair bit older than (2). Notions of Harm and Care are clearly expressed in the Mahabharata (circa 500 BC at least) in terms of the duties of kingship, but the notions of Fairness and Equality date primarily from the Enlightenment.

Also, don't think that Purity and Sanctity has become irrelevant - the Green movement is precisely a contemporary expression of these kind of moral concepts.

I'll be picking up on these ideas - and tracing the history and pre-history of morality - in my next book, "Chaos Ethics". Hopefully that book should be able to persuade you that there's a much wider view than the story that we are all progressing from a more diverse moral perspective to a more simple one. ;)

All the best!

[Mitchellkrieger]

Still, you're dodging the issue - #3, #4, and #5 are the ones that led to the Holocaust and many other horrors where the group becomes more valuable than all humanity. And I disagree with your statement about the Green movement - it's an extremely practical "do no harm" movement, recognizing that we depend on the planet upon which we live, and that humanity as a whole is negligently fouling its own nest. It is not at all an expression of abstract "purity" or "sanctity."

[Chris]

Mitchellkrieger: "#3, #4, and #5 are the ones that led to the Holocaust and many other horrors where the group becomes more valuable than all humanity"

#3 (Loyalty) and #4 (Authority) are the foundations of all working social organisations. Why jump straight to Nazi Germany as the exemplar here? Every social group from a knitting circle to a nation depends upon these foundations and unless you live in a cave you have benefited from and supported many such organisations in one way or another throughout your life.

It's a common liberal assumption that loyalty to a group leads to bigotry, although the psychology hasn't born this out in practice - not all social groups demonize outsiders, in fact, it is a minority that do. For the roots of the Holocaust, I'd place more stock in (say) Hannah Arendt's account in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" than your intuitions in this regard. You can read a short commentary by me in this regard here:
http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2010/10/institutional-evil.html

As for your claim that the Green movement can be understood solely in terms of Harm/care, it is predicated on the assumption that Harm/care is a real concern while purity/sanctity isn't. They are both abstractions. Haidt - and let's remember that it's his model I'm reporting here - makes the point that in opposing genetically modified crops et al the Green movement is drawing against a kind of purity/sanctity foundation.

If you want to take arms against Haidt's model, you'll need to pursue it with him and not with me. I support your right as a free individual to believe that harm/care is all that matters, but I don't find that position very convincing personally.

Best wishes!