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June 05, 2006
Values
I sympathize with Duncan, but Tim Russert is right: "values" are "all about teh gay and what goes on in uteruses." Once the word "values" became ascendant in political discourse, Democrats started trying to reclaim it. So health care's a values issue, progressive taxation is a values issue, the environment is a values issue, etc. But they're not.
This is something Geoffrey Numberg writes about in his coming book, Talking Right. Over the last couple of years, "values" got a definitional infusion. It's no longer a simple synonym for moral issue, at least not when we're talking in the political sense. Republicans have anchored it to a couple specific issues, and every time Democrats try to broaden the word back out, they just reactivate a frame -- a whole narrative, really -- that cuts against them.
It's notable that the CAP poll Duncan links to doesn't actually use the word "value," it asks about the most pressing "moral crisis." Which sort of proves the point. Voters don't think hot woman-on-woman action is challenging the republic, but they sure think the left is bad on "values." For that reason, Russert actually gets it correct: "values" has become a bastardized version of itself, and liberals should stop pretending differently. Luckily, the term has no internal importance and, for now, can be cast safely aside. The left needs to concentrate on creating and popularizing its own political vocabulary, not launching uphill battles to reclaim words the right long ago won. Restoring those terms is certainly an important long-term project, but with the midterms looming, we need to stop fighting the last election.
June 5, 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
Agreed. Liberals and progressives should be talking about morality, and its first cousin, ethics. Gore has started to do that, and I think it is playing well.
Posted by: shargash | Jun 5, 2006 3:51:34 PM
Interesting point: Gore calls global warming a "moral issue," not a "values issue," thereby sidestepping the whole troublesome frame.
Posted by: Ezra | Jun 5, 2006 3:59:18 PM
George Will (of all people) recently penned an article saying that this use of the word "values" is insulting to everyone it excludes; we ALL have values, they just differ.
Posted by: Kylroy | Jun 5, 2006 4:13:45 PM
The word 'morals'
I agree! Its a good choice. Environmentalism is a moral issue, so is corporate governance, so is ending poverty.
Speaks directly to what people actually think are important. How to raise your kids right?
Its a moral issue,
respect for yourself >
respect for people around you >
respect for things around you >
respect for: Insert Liberal Issue here.
Posted by: mickslam | Jun 5, 2006 4:14:08 PM
Edwards, also, calls poverty a "moral issue."
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | Jun 5, 2006 4:30:25 PM
Values, as in value or valuable. Things related to making money. I see, values issues are issues you can cash in on. "Gay marriage and abortion"! Ka-ching.
Posted by: William Bollinger | Jun 5, 2006 4:31:29 PM
I personally don't have any problem with using "morals" instead of "values", but I could also almost swear that the right chose the word "values" because "moral" simply didn't play well... after all, I am old enough to remember the standard liberal rebuttal about legislating morality being impossible. It's a good idea, but we do need to be careful when considering a discarded frame, even if it happens to fit our painting better.
Posted by: latts | Jun 5, 2006 4:43:34 PM
I am old enough to remember the standard liberal rebuttal about legislating morality being impossible.
But the right has already tied itself to that mast. No-one is going to take seriously a conservative railing against the legislating of morality these days, are they?
Posted by: nick s | Jun 5, 2006 6:12:25 PM
No-one is going to take seriously a conservative railing against the legislating of morality these days, are they?
Probably not, but they'll almost certainly take charges of liberal hypocrisy seriously.
Posted by: latts | Jun 5, 2006 6:18:21 PM
The point Ezra Klein makes is I guess fair enough.
What's interesting is that, thanks in large part to the pundits', I guess love of the letter 'v', they've got the frame being that Republicans are the party of "values" but not of "morals". This survey indicates, as much as it does anything about reality, that the Democrats have an available frame in terms of defining the term moral (which I was afraid, given what they did to ol' Jimmy when he tried to use that frame, we didn't have).
So let's claim the "moral" frame before it gets claimed for nefarious purposes as has the "values" frame!
Posted by: DAS | Jun 5, 2006 6:18:29 PM
DAS nails it. Why are we fighting to get back the label of "values?" Why not just take a BETTER label for what we believe in: "morals"?
This is like that whole "let's take back liberal" thing. Why not just call ourselves "progressives" I mean, it's a better label on semantics alone--it's got the word "progress" in it! And it lets us take all the good of liberalism and dump all the bad that inevitably accumulates when a political label is continuously used for 60 years.
Like, we're not environmentalists because we're liberals who love trees more than people, we're progressive environmentalists! We will apply American know-how to solving the problems of global warming and creating new, sustainable industries that give us all better lives in a cleaner world!
I'm mystified as to why we don't use this political jujitsu more.
Posted by: theorajones | Jun 5, 2006 6:31:44 PM
I am old enough to remember the standard liberal rebuttal about legislating morality being impossible. It's a good idea, but we do need to be careful when considering a discarded frame, even if it happens to fit our painting better. - latts
Even I am old enough to remember that (and I am still young enough to trust myself) -- and I agree with that point besides.
However, although this might be too subtle of a point with which to get votes, just because it is futile to legislate morality per se as the Republicans are wont to do, does not mean the government has no role to play in bolstering morality. There is a saying in my religious tradition: "without Torah there is no bread and without bread there is no Torah". Government insurance of a safety-net goes a long way in promoting morality (indeed, much more than gays or abortion, the Bible cares about instituting such a safety-net: e.g. the system of shared meals with sacrifices, the prohibitions against gleaning and harvesting the corners of fields, the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, etc.). OTOH, a government that completely ignores moral values (and we are not talking about gays and abortions here, but justice, which is what the Bible urges us to pursue) will not be able to ensure the sustanance of the citizens.
The point is that the particulars of morality should not be legislated -- what's moral to me (e.g. a woman whose pregnancy is threatening her life must abort) may be immoral to others (someone who believes that all abortions are wrong) and conversely (e.g. eating shrimp) -- as such legislation is divisive and ultimately undermines morality (shouldn't people who believe in free markets as more effective than government regulation want a free "market" in religious morality if they believe in the importance of the latter?). However, morality is tied up with things government can and should do much about -- like ensuring equal protection under the law (justice) and a strong safety-net.
Interestingly, it is liberals who believe in those things necessary to achieve a moral (yet secular) society -- a strong safety net, robust civil rights, while "conservatives" have been working hard to undermine those things.
Now how to put what I am posting here into succinct talking points -- that'll be a challenge.
Posted by: DAS | Jun 5, 2006 6:32:53 PM
Sounds like the liberals are the "me too" party. I doubt, however, that they will be able to redefine values.
Posted by: Fred Jones. | Jun 5, 2006 6:45:22 PM
I'll know we've stopped trying to fight the last election when we stop trying to push for Al Gore.
Posted by: weboy | Jun 5, 2006 6:56:09 PM
I do agree with you, DAS, and I was just going to post another version of your last sentence as a response ;)
The challenge, as you noted, is to make morality a part of a broader movement that promotes individual liberty and public stability. I think the common-good meme that's being floated is a good one, but we need a whole lot of marketing materials, if you will. We're well past the why-are-you-a-Democrat discussions that were popular a while back (one downside of the blogosphere is that it moves too fast to fully flesh out ideas), but my take is that I believe in personal freedom and public responsibility... pretty much any position I take can be linked to those two concepts, although of course there's always room to argue about how they're balanced. In any case, the think tanks aren't making any headway, so I guess it's up to us.
PS: I basically agree with your point about justice, too, but I don't think the word will ever mean the same thing to the right as to the left... for them, it's about retribution and for us it's about equality. In other words, it's useless as a means of communicating a specific idea between the camps.
Posted by: latts | Jun 5, 2006 7:11:51 PM
Oh give me a break. A candidate so afraid of their own shadow that they'd even listen to this kind of analysis isn't going to get elected to anything anyway.
Anyway, your "long-term project" to "restore these terms" would take five seconds if a decent candidate just stood in front of the country and said them.
Posted by: Gary Sugar | Jun 5, 2006 7:21:04 PM
Values, to your average American these days, are just more bang for your buck.
Morality. What a joke!
"MORAL, adj.
Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.
It is sayd there be a raunge of mountaynes in the Easte, on one syde of the which certayn conducts are immorall, yet on the other syde they are holden in good esteeme; wherebye the mountayneer is much
conveenyenced, for it is given to him to goe downe eyther way and act as it shall suite his moode, withouten offence.
Gooke's Meditations"
A.B. The Devil's Dictionary
Posted by: cynic | Jun 5, 2006 7:39:36 PM
Is it "moral" to turn a male prostitute into a fake reporter and have him lob softball questions in the White House Press rrom?
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | Jun 5, 2006 7:53:42 PM
If Ezra thinks we should throw in the towel on "values", why not throw in the towel on "moral", "morality", and "morals" while we're at it? The Republicans have "taken over" and redefined those terms just as well. Hell, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. Where is the evidence that "values" is hopelessly lost but somehow "moral" is salvageable?
Posted by: KCinDC | Jun 5, 2006 7:53:46 PM
cynic...
that was an apt and wonderful quote
from bierce!
thank you for adding that.
Posted by: jacqueline | Jun 6, 2006 1:07:46 AM
Look, the problem isn't that the word 'values' refers to the wrong thing. The problem is that the entire political spectrum calls sexual political issues 'values' or 'family values'. Imagine if the abortion debate were called 'life' issues.
'Values' sticks to the issue because there are no other terms with wide currency that can descibe conservative sexual politics, and the significant block of conservative activists on this issue are committed to using that word to describe those issues.
Trying to use the words 'values' and 'morals' in other contexts is a false solution. The Democratic candidate could describe every one of their positions as a 'moral issues' and the result of 'American values' but so long as they are even a little cultural liberal, the centrist media will talk about how they aren't particularly strong with 'values voters' or 'on the values issue'.
The way to solve the problem is to accept that conservative activists will continue to describe the issue that way, and adopt (a) a term for the issue that would be bad for conservatives if adopted (b) a neutral term that would be acceptable for both sides to use and then (c) getting both into general circulation in that way by using (a) almost predominately in intraparty communication and (b) in more general conversation.
Posted by: David | Jun 6, 2006 3:44:16 AM
I basically agree with your point about justice, too, but I don't think the word will ever mean the same thing to the right as to the left... for them, it's about retribution and for us it's about equality. In other words, it's useless as a means of communicating a specific idea between the camps. - latts
I've found this to be the case sometimes myself. A religious conservative friend of mine was once complaining about how liberals within his faith mis-use the phrase justice in speaking of "social justice". But that is a key part of how the word "justice" is clearly used in the Bible ... so go figure ...
Posted by: DAS | Jun 6, 2006 10:54:48 AM
Those who try to make sexual deviancy wholesome have the harder job. Is it any wonder why the average voter resists?
Posted by: Fred Jones. | Jun 6, 2006 2:12:04 PM
What a load of crap. Noone is trying to make sexual deviancy anything other than none of your damn business. Only conservatives care about what someone else does in the privacy of their own home.
Posted by: Adrock | Jun 6, 2006 2:42:35 PM
I care if you practice polygamy in the privacy of your own home because I believe that it would have a negative indirect effect on society as a whole.
I care is you use heroin in the privacy of your own home because I believe that it would have a negative indirect effect on society as a whole.
Why would I not care about anything else that I believe would have a negative indirect effect on society as a whole?
Why is it so bad to care.....and why do so many people care when you don't? What do they know that you refuse to acknowledge?
Posted by: Fred Jones. | Jun 6, 2006 3:49:38 PM
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