Republicans must love to cheer. At their presidential primary debates last year, the audiences boisterously cheered candidates who raised their hands in support of waterboarding; Texas Gov. Rick Perry?s boast about how many prisoners he had sent to the death chamber; Rep. Ron Paul?s declaration that an uninsured 30-year-old man who needs medical care should be left to die; and Herman Cain?s gripe, ?If you don?t have a job and you?re not rich, blame yourself.?
Liberals chalked it up to a new, strange, coldhearted ultraconservatism that makes ?Reservoir Dogs? look like ?Mary Poppins.? But there is something much deeper and scarier here than demagogic campaign appeals to conservative rage ? something even deeper than the new conservative machismo that treats compassion as a weakness.
Continue ReadingWhat is happening to America is not the rise of a new conservatism. It is the demise of shame.
Conservatives of the past, like conservatives of today, excoriated government efforts to assist the needy. But they were quick to add it was government they hated ? not the needy themselves.
They might have grumbled about taxes and government giveaways and even federal incursions into what they considered state matters, like civil rights. But they didn?t take pride in being merciless or hateful. Indeed, even if they harbored those feelings, the nation?s overwhelming sense of Judeo-Christian moral righteousness forced them to at least talk about concern for the underprivileged. No one wanted to seem mean.
Not any more.
Over the past 40 years, as conservatives have complained, this nation has undergone a moral revolution. It?s just not the one they think. They bemoan greater tolerance for homosexuality; loosened sexual strictures; and overall sexualization of the culture, the coarsened language, provocative dress and a general lack of discipline. But gay rights aside, that is largely aesthetics, not morality.
America?s real moral revolution has been the abandonment of those old Judeo-Christian precepts to which both liberals and conservatives subscribed ? tolerance, compassion and generosity on the one hand and hard work, honesty and fairness on the other.
Conservatives and liberals have different worldviews. But they were bound by these dual moralities ? one of justice, the other of responsibility.
They were also bound by a powerful force that made these operational: shame.
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