November 8, 2004
MORALITY ISN'T DEMOCRATIC:
What We Bush Voters Share: In God We Trust (David Klinghoffer, November 8, 2004, LA Times)
There are two possibilities. Either we know what's right because God or his earthly agents inform us through objective revelation or tradition — or, we know because that's just what the better-informed human beings appear to have decided, through a subjective process of moral democracy. President Bush is the country's most prominent believer in objective morality.By contrast, the idea that humans determine what's right animated Kerry's campaign. [...]
When the president's admirers — Jews, Christians and others — say they care about "moral values," they mean the objectivity of values in principle.
Actually, there's one commandment that moral subjectivists don't respect — Commandment No. 1: "I am the Lord your God" (Exodus 20:2). It functions as preamble to what will follow, explaining why we need to abide by the remaining nine: because it is "the Lord your God" who sanctions them. Most Americans — you might call them the First Commandment Alliance — affirm God's role in establishing right and wrong. That alliance includes those Jews, Christians and members of other faiths who see the question of morality and its source as the president does. It even includes nonreligious folk who, if unsure about God, still think that morality has an objective basis, perhaps in nature.
This coalition of like-minded individuals forms a majority of Americans, but not necessarily a permanent one. The minority of moral subjectivists will have their opportunity to take back primacy four years from now.
As Chesterton put it,
Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.
MORE:
Our Union’s Jewish State (David Klinghoffer, 3/17/04, The Forward)
Tradition. You know, that's what the "silent majority" refers to--the mos maiorum, the customs of the ancestors. That these notion are beiong examined now is a resurgence of real Kirkian conservatism, and I lived to see it. I would have been happy just to have seen the going-under of Communism
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 9, 2004 2:31 AMTradition is fine and all, but sometimes you have to look at your ancestors and say "What the @%#%@ were you thinking?" How does the vote tally on human sacrifice? Also, do your ancestors get to change their vote if they could live your life?
Every tradition was started by a heretic.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at November 10, 2004 12:50 AMRobert:
Obviously there's some deeply felt need for human sacrifice in mankind, after all, we have more not less now and for the same reason, to invoke power.
Posted by: oj at November 10, 2004 7:28 AMSo is that an example of the wisdom of following tradition?
Posted by: Robert Duquette at November 10, 2004 10:31 PM