None Of Us Think We’re Morally Reprehensible
July 19, 2007
From my last few posts, you can probably guess that I don’t identify as a Libertarian. Good guess. In fact, I make no bones about being a fairly typical bleedin’ heart liberal.
What do I mean by that? Well, I’d like to see my tax money help keep people from starving to death or dying of preventable illnesses in the middle of one of the wealthiest nations in the world. I’d like to see an end in my lifetime to discrimination based on sex, sexual identity, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, & etc., and I think that the U.S. judicial system must sometimes be called upon to intervene when unjust, un-Constitutional laws propagate such discrimination. I think the current war in Iraq is a crime, that taking the war to Iran would be a further crime, and that 2008 can’t come soon enough.
Oddly enough, I don’t think any of the above are morally reprehensible positions. Much the opposite, actually–I hold them because I believe to do otherwise would be immoral.
I have that in common with most of the population: we all hold the views we believe are the most moral, the most just, the most right. Who would be the villain in his own autobiography?
Same goes for 35-year-old Hillary-Ann:
“Of course, we need to execute some of these people… A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country,” she says. “Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that’s what you’ll get.” She squints at the sun and smiles. “Then things’ll change.”
Smiling Hillary-Ann doesn’t think this view is morally reprehensible at all. I admit I have a hard time wrapping my fuzzy, warm, liberal mind around that. And I would. The political opinions I hold qualify me for a seat on her one-way train to the “showers.” And yet, to believe that Hillary-Ann actually considers her own views evil, and that she holds those views anyway, that she rubs her hands together in cackling mad, despotic glee when she thinks about stuffing war-protesters by the score into tiny cement rooms with ceiling vents for very special air conditioning–that would be to dehumanize her. That would be to mentally subdivide the human species into two sub-species: real people, and monsters. And when we mistake real people for monsters, we start convincing ourselves that basic human rights don’t extend to them. And that would be wrong.
Hillary-Ann is one of the many people that journalist Johann Hari met and conversed with during a cruise organized by the National Review, “the bible of American conservatism.”
Here, the Iraq war has been “an amazing success”. Global warming is not happening. The solitary black person claims, “If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights, then God bless them.” And I have nowhere to run.
—Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren’t Listening. (Via BoingBoing, natch.)
The article goes on for five damning pages… damning, that is, in the eyes of anyone who thinks it’s morally reprehensible to pursue a campaign of ideological purity via capital punishment. I would be tempted to say, “Damning, that is, in the eyes of all sane, right-thinking people,” but then, I’m not a Neocon. I think I’m right to condemn Hillary-Ann’s viewpoint.
Hillary-Ann, however, thinks she’s right to hold it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t, right?
I’m not advocating moral relativity. All I’m pointing out is, we do ourselves no favors when we write off the Hillary-Anns of the world as crackpots who ought not to be taken seriously. Consider: The National Review stays in profitable print because of people like Hillary-Ann. It filled some 500 cabins, at $1200-a-pop, with people like Hillary-Ann. And there’s got to be a lot of National Review readers who didn’t go on the cruise.
When I first read the article, I didn’t continue to page two, but instead read on through the comments section (which repeats itself on every page of the article). I wanted to see how people who identify with the cruise-goers, or at least as politically conservative U.S. citizens, reacted to the story… and how they defended–if they defended–the cruise-goers’ views.
There are a lot of comments. I’ll continue next post after you and I have both had time to read them.
What alarms me about the Hillary Anne’s of the world is not that their views are so frighteningly wrong. It’s that I might hold the same views if I had been exposed to a different set of circumstances. Like, if I hadn’t gone to college, I might still be seeing things the way my parents see them.
I guess it’s a good argument for being educated.
Comment by Burning Tree — July 20, 2007 @ 7:02 am
I’m a little disturbed by the article’s lumping of conservative view points as the end all be all of conservatism and the end all and be all of America with out understanding.
I’m a National Review reading, gun toting, pagan independent-registered republican who votes democrat on most occasions, hates taxes but believes that if I have to pay them they better be going for social well-being, not a criminal war effort.
I count neocons and demos among my friends. I have been to plenty of republican - Christian oriented functions in my lifetime…and let me tell you now that the opinions expressed in that article are horrible, wrong and NOT held by any neocon I know.
“right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans.”
Says the article. I hear that and my heart drops. Would my straight-talking gun-toting atheist republican boyfriend identify with them? The answer is no. What about my friend who is straight talking gun-toting democrat?
What about the liberal Christians?
The point is that the dual molds that the media want us to believe all fit into are only for extremist. For the majority there is a middle ground.
Of course these crazy neocon people exist…but it is much out of ignorance as it is out of being neocon fanatics.
The fact that this report is doing his best to search them out doesn’t prove anything other than we need to listen to what people are saying and vote accordingly. The article is overblown and over dramatic.
Likening the cocktail reception to Gone with the Wind makes me think his knowledge of American gatherings is lax and steeped in fairy tale. Hasn’t he been to a cocktail reception? Resorts all over hold them and they are a pattering of small talk and polite innuendo. Cruises take this to extreme which is why you have to make an effort to find an informal cruise.
Okay I’m nitpicking. I don’t like these people, not a bit, but I don’t like the reporter who pigeon holes Americans either. We’re a bigger country than a few crazy neocons on a boat.
I think it’s cute that Hari thinks that there are two kinds of Republicans after 9/11. I wish that I could say that were true…but republicans come in all stripes. We didn’t notice the “neocons” until Bush came to power but they’ve always been there.
Yes Podhoretz is living in La La Land. He’s a neocon poster boy. But it’s not the end all and be all of conservatism.
People tend to forget that the UK and the US are very different places. His questions are loaded to the UK opinion. Hari is trying to paint America as an evil place. That saddens me. He displays a lack of understanding of Connerly who should be commended on his “rising above”. He has always struck me as a man who would fight for rights regardless of race, or religion. A “I hate what your saying but I’ll die for your right to say it” type. Hari is trying to pigeon hole the delicate issue of caste in America and equal rights into a few badly worded paragraphs which paint Connerly as a “race traitor”.
His high and mighty attitude about Mexico also paints an ignorant picture. Legal and illegal immigrants is another tough American issue that is largely tied to Mexican politics and the fact that they system which lets illegal immigrants come to this country and work and even get citizenship also allows wanted, dangerous felons to walk free and continue to hurt everyone. I have personal experience in this, before you ask, both from living in Mexico and being married to a wanted felon.
It would be amusing to watch Hari find the real Mexico. If he wanted to see it he’d be better off making some friends at the local bar or dance club and having them take you out…if you don’t just go yourself. Finding a random boy could get him into a lot of trouble for a lot of reasons. I would have asked if he wanted to die too.
So even Hari doesn’t thing he’s morally reprehensible. But he’s just as good as an example as Hillary-Ann. I don’t like either of them. Hari’s views are as simplistic as the people he interviewed in most cases.
Comment by Michelle — July 20, 2007 @ 8:53 am
I’ve occasionally had the many-degrees-milder version of those conversations, where once you’ve made enough polite chit-chat for someone to decide you’re all right, they cheerfully start to tell you which minority group they want punished; or alternately, you mention something seemingly innocent like the name of the province you grew up in, and have to endure a fifteen-minute rant about how *everybody* from New Brunswick (except you) is an evil bigoted homophobe…
The hard part about trying not to generalize/pre-judge people is knowing that many of them won’t return the favour.
Comment by Sarah Ennals — July 20, 2007 @ 2:27 pm
Hi all.
Michelle, I’m glad to hear you speaking up for the sane sub-set of that huge body of thoughts clustered under the verbal umbrella of “conservative America.” You’re a welcome antidote to some of the responses Hari’s article got on Alternet, which I explore in my next post.
I have two nit-picks with you, though:
“It would be amusing to watch Hari find the real Mexico…” Which state? Which city? Which neighborhood? Heck, I’ve wandered outside of the tourist areas into a residential area in Mexico, and here I am. I think you may be as guilty of lumping all of Mexico together as Hari may be of lumping conservatives together. Thinking about just one city that I know quite well, New Orleans… if a white man proposed wandering about alone in the Desire Project, sure, I’d ask him if he wanted to die. If the same man proposed a walkabout in the Bywater, Irish Channel, or Marigny districts, I’d tell him to make sure to visit this or that nightclub, shop, or park and tell me tomorrow what a good time he had. And that kind of variety is only one city. If you can’t make a generalization about your safety in just one city, surely generalizing about an entire country can’t be right?
Second nit-pick: You quoted only part of one sentence in the intro to Hari’s piece, and that kind of kills the meaning, because it’s a sentence full of dependent parenthetical clauses. Take the whole sentence quote and parse it out:
“The annual cruise organized by the ‘National Review,’ mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans.”
It didn’t say that right-wing America is a parallel universe; it said that the cruise was.
Leaving the nitpicks and moving into something you and I could happily and profitably argue about: Personally, I find it hard to believe that the cruise organized by the National Review is not a fair representation of the general political thought of National Review readers. Sure, that subset skews for wealth; only those readers with enough disposable income would go. But I can’t imagine it skews for political opinion. Not unless its advertisements said things like “Come talk with other like-minded fellows away from the prying ears of the public, where
racism and fascismpolitical incorrectness is welcomed.”I’d be very interested to see a body of commentary on this article by an actual subset of National Review readers that weren’t on the cruise. So far, all I’ve got are the comments at the Alternet site–which, again, I discuss in my next post.
(PS. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow? John and I will be at the coffee shop. We’ll bring his Go board. We haven’t picked up the books on Japanese yet–sorry.)
Comment by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little — July 20, 2007 @ 8:49 pm
On Seeing the real Mexico:
Would you find a random little boy in Milwalkee to show you the real US? How about a random little boy in London to show you the real UK?
Why?
I’m not talking about the city. Or even the country…(I did live near where Hari put down for a day or so.)
Why would you expect a singular little boy to be able to show you around 1. without knowing his parents, or 2. expecting him to be a model citizen.
That number 1 could get put in Jail. That number 2. could also..it could also get you dead.
The second nitpick had to do with the sentence I quoted. Part of what appalled me at this article was the fact that he was pigeon-holing Americans and/or Republicans into that mold. Yes the cruise probably represented a wide range of the views held by National Review readers…but Hari only found the ones he could shove into his agenda.
Huh..there was no Go at the coffee shop (I know, John was busy)…so I declare victory…in that I suck so hard at Go I escaped hours of mirth at my expense
Sorry I didn’t read this before coffee time if I had I would have pulled out my books for the looky.
Comment by Michelle — July 23, 2007 @ 8:07 am
I’m afraid the Go board didn’t come out because I was too busy happily blabbing with you and everyone.
Maybe next time!
Comment by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little — July 25, 2007 @ 7:31 pm