Moral Is As Moral Does

Liberals like to present themselves as conspicuously moral.  The recent election, however, as exposed them as shallow poseurs.  For all their talk about compassion and truth, they have demonstrated a penchant for rank dishonesty.

Although liberals regard themselves as upright, they revealed a callous disregard for morality.  Moral people behave morally.  They do more than congratulate themselves for their superior values.  They live by them.  If they don’t, they don’t have them.

One of the things I teach at Kennesaw State University is the sociology of morality.  I explain to my classes how morality operates.  The goal is not to tell students what is right, but to analyze how moral rules work.  This includes how they are enforced.

Moral rules tell us what to do and what not to do.  Don’t lie!  Don’t steal!  Don’t murder!  Proscriptions of this sort are at the heart of the enterprise.  We learn them when we are young and insist that they be honored when we grow older.

Without this, society would be anarchic.  Because human beings have incompatible interests, we compete to see who will prevail.  Thomas Hobbes long ago warned that this could precipitate a war of all against all.  Thanks to our selfishness, we might be so aggressive that few escaped without serious injury.

The first line of defense of moral rules turns out to be anger.  When someone violates a regulation to which we subscribe, we get upset.  We let the malefactor know, in no uncertain terms, that this was unacceptable.  Often enough, because an angry rebuke is distressing, people conform.  Thus, if they told a lie, they cease telling it.

In class, I illustrate this with a demonstration.  I pretend to shoot someone and then act as if nothing had happened.  After this, I ask the students what would have occurred if there had been an actual murder?  Over and above their fear, wouldn’t they have been outraged?

But what if they weren’t?  What if we all proceeded as if there wasn’t a corpse in our midst?  Wouldn’t this indicate that we didn’t consider murder a serious offence?  Wouldn’t it demonstrate that we did not believe a rule against it had to be upheld?

But isn’t this the situation we find ourselves with respect to Hillary’s lies?  She told us untruth after untruth.  She lied about her server.  She lied about pay-for-play.  She lied about Benghazi.  Many of these were big lies.  Others were small.  Nonetheless, there were no apologies.  There was no contrition.

Did Hillary’s supporters call her to task for these fabrications?  Did they ask her to clean up her act?  Were they angry at her for her many deceits?  If they were not, did they believe she committed any infractions?

The answer is obvious.  Hillary’s backers applauded her misrepresentations.  Because they wanted her to win, they hoped these would work.  Far from getting angry at her, they reserved their wrath for her opponent.  He, and only he, was the dissembler.

The point is that Hillary and her crew did not consider their own duplicity immoral.  They never worried about crossing an ethical line.  So far as they were concerned, they were always moral.  Because theirs was a good cause, they had done nothing of which they should be ashamed.

This is consequently a case of justifying immorality with morality.  On the other hand, moral is as moral does.  Whatever rationalizations allowed Hillary people to excuse their transgressions, they were rationalizations.  Corruption is corruption.  Lies are lies.

Liberalism, unfortunately, is plagued with self-righteous vices.  People convinced that they are saving the world often permit themselves latitude.  They do not apply to themselves standards they employ with others.  As they see it, the good they do outweighs any shortcuts they may take.

This is why liberals are seldom dismayed when their policies backfire.  So what if the poor are getting poorer.  Given progressives good intentions, any missteps they might make are canceled out.   As a result, they simply move on from one aborted policy to the next.

Harming people in the name of helping them is not, however, a virtue.  Even if disguising one’s failures is done unconsciously, this predilection is not praiseworthy.  It is an anteroom to folly; a gateway to perpetual transgressions.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University