Pundit Boxscore for Friday 14 November 2003

THE ECONOMIST: Lying in Ponds gets a favorable mention in the Economist today, in a profile on Paul Krugman called "The one-handed economist". For those visiting for the first time with an interest in Mr. Krugman, my best recent summary of his work is here. Coincidentally, next week I'll be posting an analysis of his 2001 columns, which I've just finished.

MORAL POLITICS: My colleague Andrew Cline praises George Lakoff's book Moral Politics so frequently that I finally had to give in a while back and read it. There are many things in the book which I don't agree with, but I do agree with Andrew that Mr. Lakoff's central thesis is right on target -- that most of the differences between liberals and conservatives can be understood as resulting from two competing moral worldviews, which he calls "Strict Father Morality" (conservatives) and "Nurturant Parent Morality" (liberals):

. . . So far as I can tell, the main issue in every conservative political policy is morality -- good versus evil. There is nothing surprising in this. Conservatives consider themselves moral people and they talk about morality and the family constantly. But to liberals, who have their own very different moral system, conservative policies are so immoral that any conservative discussion of morality is taken as demagoguery.

Of course, liberals also see their policies as moral and their overall politics as serving moral goals. Conservatives, however, talk as if liberals were degenerates opposed to morality; as if they were corrupted by special interests; as if they loved expensive and inefficient bureaucracy; as if they wanted to take away the rights of citizens. Each side sees the other as immoral, corrupt, and lunkheaded. Neither side wants to see the other as moral in any way. Neither side wants to recognize that there are two, opposed, highly-structured, well-grounded, widely accepted, and utterly contradictory moral systems at the center of American politics.

The failure to see that politics is fundamentally about morality demeans American politics. It makes all politicians look immoral. And it hides the deep logic behind political positions.