Can liberal morality work in reality?

I've presented the following quote from Dr Leslie Cannold, an Australian ethicist, a few times now:

Defining our own good, and living our lives in pursuit of it, is at the heart of a moral life.

It captures an aspect of the liberal attitude to morality, namely that objective goods either don't exist or can't be known to us, and that therefore what matters is a freedom to subjectively define our own good, and not to interfere in others doing the same.

But can this liberal approach work in real life? I'd like to present some evidence that it's not likely to be held to consistently, not even by Dr Cannold herself.

Back in 2005 Dr Cannold had a book published called What, no baby? She herself was married with children at the time, but the book was about the large numbers of Western women of my generation who missed out on marriage and children.

An interesting review of the book, by novelist Joanna Murray-Smith, begins:

"What most women want is actually quite simple. What they want is men. And babies." So writes Leslie Cannold, a researcher and ethicist from Melbourne University, whose book explores why so many women desirous of children fail to have them. The Australian Bureau of Statistics says up to 25 per cent of Australian women of reproductive age will fail to have children, some by choice, others by "circumstance".

So what happened to "defining our own good"? Dr Cannold is suggesting here that there is a good that can be known, i.e. that most women will identify marriage and motherhood as significant goods. Already, Dr Cannold's liberal formula is failing.

It gets worse, because Dr Cannold goes on to recognise that once we identify this good, that a purely individual pursuit of it won't work. There are some goods that require a certain larger context to make them available or achievable: many women, for instance, won't be able to pursue marriage if there aren't sufficient numbers of men willing to marry; the opportunity to marry might also be affected by other values or lifestyles embedded in a culture or society.

Cannold's premise is that the declining fertility rates in Western countries are not due to a lack of desire to reproduce, but rather to circumstances unconducive to baby-having.

Cannold takes a left-wing approach to making society more family friendly, arguing that women didn't marry and have children, despite wanting to, because they would have had to give up professional status, income and security in the workplace in order to do so.

I don't believe that's the best answer (nor does Joanna Murray-Smith), but the point remans that Cannold has been forced to recognise that there are some goods we can know as an aspect of human nature, and that we have to think through the impact of culture and social organisation in upholding these goods (that the framework of society has to be so ordered to allow the most significant goods to be widely achievable).

If we were to stick resolutely to 'self-defining our own good and living our life in pursuit of it' then the possible range of goods would have to be narrowed to those things that can be achieved at a purely individual level, and these things tend to be relatively trivial aims.

Back, though, to Cannold recognising that the framework of society matters. Joanna Murray-Smith doesn't think it adequate to blame women not marrying on workplace organisation alone:

Cannold makes many valid points, but I don't know any woman who allows the unfriendly workplace to win over her maternal desire.

Joanna Murray-Smith thinks the negative effects of feminism should be acknowledged:

While Cannold energetically cites many hazardous influences to (fertile) women's desire to procreate, feminism is the only thing that is excused...

"Waiters and watchers are women who saw when they were young - often in their own mothers - that children threatened all they were being taught to value in life: financial independence, romantic relationships, high-powered careers." Was feminism no part of this?

Which brings me to a comment that any younger female readers should pay particular attention to. In 2003 an Australian journalist, Virginia Haussegger, lamented that she had followed the advice of older feminists in single-mindedly pursuing the goals of a career and independence, but that this had left her childless and unfulfilled.

Dr Cannold's response to Virginia Haussegger is this:

"It is true that feminists urged all women to shed their domestic shackles and seek fulfilment and financial independence outside the home. But what is Haussegger? A brainless puppet? A mindless drone?"

It's another dismissive response to women who were negatively affected by feminism. It's a reminder, too, of the way that some feminists simply expect to make "unprincipled exceptions" to their own beliefs and consider other feminists who don't do this as lacking social skills (it's like they're saying "you should follow path x, that's the belief, but don't blame us if it goes belly up, you really ought to think for yourself").

Finally, notice the phrase that Dr Cannold uses "shed their domestic shackles". That makes it sound as if hearth and home is a kind of prison to escape from. In saying this, Dr Cannold is once again establishing a culture or influence that is likely to discourage young women from committing to motherhood until it's too late.

Joanna Murray-Smith notices the same thing:

There seems to be a complete lack of awareness that her own attitudes may be part of the problem. The author's commitment to mothers is always in tandem with their ability and desire to work. And while there's absolutely nothing wrong with advocating a world that serves both interests, what is missing is acknowledgement of women (and men) of all "classes" who want to parent full-time; choice rather patronisingly described as "misplaced social nostalgia about white picket fences".

Knowing it's wrong, unable to say why

Magaluf is a tourist resort on the Spanish island of Majorca. It has hit the news because of an incident at a bar there in which an 18-year-old British woman performed a sex act on 24 men in under three minutes (she won a free drink).

She (and the men involved) have been universally condemned, with the mayor expressing his "total rejection" of and "absolute indignation" at what took place.

But here's the thing. Under the rules of liberalism what the girl did isn't wrong at all. As Dr Leslie Cannold, an Australian ethicist, put it:

Defining our own good, and living our lives in pursuit of it, is at the heart of a moral life.

What matters for liberals is that we get to subjectively define our own good. What it is that we happen to choose doesn't matter (as long as it doesn't interfere with others equally defining their own good).

Under the terms of liberalism, what the girl did might in fact be thought heroic. After all, she defied a moral taboo to act as she wanted to.

And yet what she did will strike just about everyone as being very wrong, as a new low point in the moral life of the West. Even most liberals are going to instinctively think of it as wrong.

So how do liberals extricate themselves from this dilemma? Their moral philosophy says that what the girl did was virtuous, but their moral intuition tells them that it is deeply wrong.

Well, there is an underhand way out of the dilemma, and that's to claim that the girl's choice wasn't really her choice after all, that she didn't give consent adequately and so on. And that's how the left-liberal press is treating this:

Katie Russell, a spokesperson for Rape Crisis said: “The exact circumstances are unclear but we are very concerned about girls and young women being coerced or exploited in situations where they are potentially vulnerable for example through alcohol consumption.

“There are obvious issues of consent here; it is not clear whether this video was made with the young woman’s consent and it is not clear whether those who have posted and shared the video widely did so with her consent."

Holly Dustin, Director of End Violence Against Women said: “This incident and the wide online sharing of the video points to enormous questions of lack of consent and abuse."

That is what is left to liberals in expressing moral disapproval. All that they can do is to query whether the choice is authentic or coerced.

It's not persuasive. Let's say the young woman involved hadn't drunk any alcohol at all. Would her actions then strike us as being morally legitimate? And here's another problem with this approach to morality: it is easily defeated. What, for instance, if the young woman insists that she was not, in fact, coerced?

That's the defence that the organisers of the bar crawl are making. They have released a statement saying:

All you need to do is look at the video and you can see she clearly isn't drunk and knows what she is doing. Definitely not forced in any way.

And they pointed out that:

The girl and her 8 friends bought tickets for the next BARCRAWL as they said it was AMAZING!

Even those involved in organising bar crawls are aware of the rules of play. Anything goes as long as it's consensual. Therefore, moral debate has to focus on the issue of consent, rather than on the quality of the actions themselves.

Universalising oneself out of existence: Adler

I am reading The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America by Eric Kaufmann. Kaufmann describes the emergence in America in the late 1800s of intellectuals who believed that it was moral and progressive for particular traditions to universalise themselves out of existence.

The liberal, secularising wings of both Protestantism and Judaism were drawn to this position. Felix Adler was a prominent Jewish proponent of the idea, writing in 1878 that Jews had a special role in pushing along a process of universalisation until the point was reached in which their own "distinctiveness will fade. And eventually, the Jewish race will die."

Not all liberal Jews accepted Adler's position. Mordecai Kaplan argued,

that Jews did not need to be justified as the people chosen by God for the sake of a unique monotheistic mission. Every nation and culture had the right to perpetuate itself, albeit without harming others.

Kaplan was not a conservative, but his position is the one held by traditionalists. On reading the early chapters of Kaufmann's book, I was struck by how "overloaded" the idea of Anglo-Saxonism was in the U.S. It was as if Anglo-Saxonism was valued not in itself, but in its "mission" or "destiny" in bringing a liberal order to a new continent.

An ethnic tradition should be valued, amongst other things, for its unique character and culture; for its contributions to the arts and sciences; and for its significance to the identity and sense of belonging of the individual. It doesn't need to be exceptional in its global mission.

I've had a quick look at Adler's beliefs. A few things stand out. Adler drew from a range of intellectual traditions: he was raised within Reform Judaism but was rejected as a rabbi for his lack of orthodoxy; he drew also from the philosophy of Kant and the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson seems to have been particularly important:

While morality had been an oppressive element in the Christian tradition...for Emerson our moral sense makes us free. Moral sensitivity enables us to become the architects and sculptors of an autonomous personhood. It was this thought that ethics can be creative and reconstructive that entranced the young Felix Adler and set him on the path that led to the development of Ethical Culture.

We still have here a core belief in "freedom as autonomy," alongside a focus on the "creative spirit" aspect of human nature - a drive to "reconstruct" the self and the society we inhabit.

Adler himself wrote:

And this is the prerogative of man, that he need not blindly follow the law of his being, but that he is himself the author of the moral law, and creates it even in acting it out.

This, at the very least, sounds like the modern liberal idea that it is autonomy (self-authorship) that gives man his dignity. Adler went on to write:

We are all soldiers in the great army of mankind, battling in the cause of moral freedom.

Battling not for moral goodness but for moral freedom? To author and to create our own moral law?

I would need to study Adler's writings in greater depth to make a more certain comment here, but from what I've read Adler went through a crisis of faith that struck many intellectuals at the time and he seems to have responded by setting up "Humanity" as a new god - in this literal sense he was a liberal humanist.

It makes sense if this is the entity you seek to serve that you might then become a globalist or cosmopolitan. If you are serving a larger humanity, as a replacement for God, then you won't want people to look to their own particular communities - you will think it to be progress if people give up "parochial" identities in favour of a single global one of a common "Humanity".

(Another thought occurs to me: if you are aiming at "moral freedom" then you might find renouncing particular allegiances an appealing move, as a duty to humanity in general is much more open and non-specific that the particular duties we have to family, tribe, church and nation.)

Traditionalists do not think it moral to renounce particular communities and identities in favour of a single global one. Our closer relationships and identities do have an important claim on us and it is moral for us to discharge our duties to each one, beginning with self and family, and running on to community, ethny and nation, and then finally to a common humanity.

Germany: no right of exit

This is an extraordinary story (hat tip: Laura Wood). There is a German family (the Wunderlichs) whose children were being homeschooled - that is, until the German state sent in a team of 20 special agents, police officers and social workers to forcibly seize the children from their parents (homeschooling is illegal in Germany).

The children have been returned to their parents but are under the legal custody of social workers. A judge has rejected the idea of returning legal custody to the parents, even though the children now attend a public school. Why?

The answer: in part to prevent the parents getting visas for their children and moving to another country in which homeschooling is permitted. In other words, to prevent any right of exit from Germany.

In a shocking verdict regarding a homeschool case in Germany, a family court judge has refused to return legal custody of four children to Christian parents to prevent the family from obtaining visas that would allow them to travel to a country where homeschooling is permitted.

The judge made this decision in the name of liberal morality: he fears that if the children are homeschooled they will not become sufficiently tolerant of others:

In his decision, the judge ruled that it was necessary to keep the Wunderlich children in public school for their own “well-being,” arguing that if the children were homeschooled in Germany or abroad they would “grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”

Here is a prime example of how a liberal morality doesn't work. In the name of tolerance, a German judge has told a family that they have no right to leave Germany. This brings to mind the situation in the former East Germany, in which citizens were likewise forced to stay. When the Berlin Wall went up in the early 1960s, outraged West Germans called for it to be torn down as an affront to freedom. But now it is not communists but liberals who are denying German citizens a right to exit.

The Wunderlich family

And this is despite the fact that a right to exit is the key qualification that liberals themselves specify when considering whether non-liberal communities are acceptable or not. From a liberal discussion of this issue we learn that,

Susan Moller Okin has [said that] "any consistent defense of group rights or exemptions that is based on liberal premises has to ensure that at least one individual right – the right to exit one's group of origin – trumps any group right.' Exit rights, then, are thought to limit the repression of group members and thus to be either sufficient for or necessary to compliance with moral principles.

So "the right to exit one's group of origin" is considered crucial by liberals when determining whether or not a community meets liberal moral standards. The German judge is contravening one core liberal principle (the right to exit) in the name of another (tolerance). He is also imposing an authoritarian principle (no right of exit), previously associated with East German communism, in the name of tolerance.

Liberal morality is not proving to be internally consistent here.

The problem goes back to the fundamentals of a liberal morality. Liberals begin by assuming that an objective good can't be known and that therefore people must self-determine their own subjective goods. For this to work, though, individuals have to be careful not to infringe on the moral choices or the self-defined goods of others - to do so means denying those people their moral agency (disempowering them).

And so liberals have gone on to emphasise as virtues qualities of non-interference, such as respect, openness, diversity, non-discrimination, tolerance and so on. But once these became the liberal virtues, they became the focus and the standard of human moral life, i.e. the new public standard of the good.

But they are problematic as a standard. As pointed out above, it means that moral discrimination is enacted in the name of non-discrimination and that intrusive or authoritarian acts of the state are carried out in the name of tolerance.

Furthermore, these moral standards are too narrow. There is a recognition of "non-interference" as a moral standard, but what about, say, the importance of the connection between parent and child? How can moral decisions be weighted or balanced when only one aspect of a moral situation is considered in terms of moral principle?

This is not to say that there were not moral standards in traditional societies. They tended, though, to be less connected to the state. For instance, let's say that in a traditional society there is an ideal of masculinity, which includes virtues of courage and honour. These are connected to character: a man who was considered cowardly or dishonourable might have been judged negatively, which was no doubt discomfiting, but that would have been thought of as a personal failing - there was no need for the state to get involved.

Liberals, however, have created a state morality: it has become the aim of politics to impose the moral standards of non-discrimination, inclusion, tolerance etc. on society. This aim will inevitably be intrusive and authoritarian, as it requires the state to break apart the usual inclinations of human association - as well as diminishing the authority of non-state institutions and loyalties, such as those of the family.

The German ruling gives us an idea of where all this is going to take us. It is not going to be a place of freedom. It will be a place where we, as disconnected and disempowered individuals (relieved of most of our social functions), will have to accept our place within a closely managed system administered by the state.

Oh, and it seems you won't be allowed to leave for somewhere better.

Why the attacks on Cory Bernardi?

Cory Bernardi is still being attacked in the Australian media.

Bernardi, if you remember, is a conservative-leaning Liberal Party senator. He wrote a book in which he called the traditional family the gold standard and pointed out that there are higher rates of incarceration for boys from single parent families.

It provoked a furious reaction from the political class here. Bernardi has been ridiculed and mocked for his comments. I thought it might be interesting to look at the way the political class has gone about its work.

Quite a few anti-Bernardi articles focused on the "I am offended" angle. For instance, Nicole Ferrie wrote that it was "drivel" and "rubbish" for Bernardi to claim that the gold standard for children's development was to be raised by their biological parents. According to Ferrie, Bernardi is guilty of "condemning" and "judging" people for their choices which makes his views "ignorant" and "offensive" and discriminatory.

There are two things to be said about Ferrie's response to Bernardi. First, it is a pretty orthodox statement of liberal morality. Liberal morality goes something like this:

i) what matters is that our autonomy in choosing what to do or be remains unimpeded
ii) for this to work at a larger level we must not interfere with what others choose to do or to be
iii) therefore the key moral virtues are those of non-interference or non-infringement such as respect, openness, tolerance, non-judgementalism, non-discrimination, acceptance of diversity, etc.

You can see how Bernardi has violated a liberal morality. He has "judged" people for their "choices" which then means that he is guilty of "discrimination." He is therefore considered to be wrong not just politically but morally - hence, he is being treated like a moral outcast.

It doesn't matter in this view if what Bernardi says about the benefits of traditional families is true or not. That's not what is of interest to Ferrie. She just assumes, in line with a liberal morality, that an attitude of respect and a universal, fit everything love, will carry things along - what other attitude could a liberal take?

It will be very difficult to persuade the likes of Ferrie with facts and figures. What we need to do is to wean our intellectual class away from the underlying assumptions of a liberal morality. Our intellectual class needs to be persuaded that it is possible to have some knowledge of an objective good and that there are positive virtues that go beyond "non-infringement".

Which brings me to the second point to be made about Ferrie's response to Bernardi. She believes that it is "offensive" to say that not all family forms are equal; it is supposed to be an insult to single mothers or to children raised in non-traditional families.

Now, I don't think politics should be a game of who shouts loudest about feeling offended. But it does occur to me that Ferrie herself is being offensive in claiming that all family types are equal.

Think about what she is really saying. She is arguing that if you have two families, one being a single mother raising children, the other being a father and mother raising children, that there is no reason to prefer one family type over the other.

What this means is that the father in the traditional family may as well not be there. He is not value adding to any significant degree, neither in his support of his wife, nor in his influence on his children, nor in his contribution of father love. All of his efforts are in vain, as all that is needed in a family is abstract love and respect and this occurs to an equal degree in fatherless families.

Furthermore, if a single mother family is equal to a traditional one, then a particular kind of love, namely marital love is also of little worth. It cannot have much significance in the lives of women, as a family with this kind of love is not to be preferred over one without it.

Is this not just a bit offensive to fathers? In fact, isn't it a lot more offensive to fathers than anything that Cory Bernardi might have implied about single mothers? You can take Cory Bernardi's position and still think that what mothers do is vitally important. But if you take Ferrie's view you are committed to the idea that what men do in the family is not that significant - neither as husbands nor as fathers.

Here we get back to the problem that liberal intellectuals aren't willing to recognise objective goods or virtues that go beyond non-interference. Ferrie, for instance, does not recognise as a significant good marital love or father love. If she did, then she would more likely view the traditional family as an ideal to aim at.

There are some other interesting things to reflect on in the liberal criticisms of Cory Bernardi, but I'll resume the discussion in a future post.

Can Lily Allen criticise Robin Thicke?

One of the most popular songs this year was "Blurred lines" by Robin Thicke. It has a video featuring topless dancers, whilst the lyrics are about men trying to seduce good girls.

The song annoyed English singer Lily Allen who penned an angry feminist response called "Hard out here". But Allen's song is exceptionally coarse. And Lily Allen herself is a staunch feminist defender of the right of women to be unrestrained in their sexuality and not to be called sluts for being so.

Which means it's difficult to take her criticism of Robin Thicke seriously. She's not interested in upholding reasonable standards. Instead, she wants women to have an absolute right to do whatever they want sexually, whilst at the same time expecting men to restrain their sexuality according to feminist demands.


Lily Allen: not the best choice to criticise Robin Thicke

I don't see how this can work. How can women behave coarsely and without limits, without that then affecting the behaviour of the men around them? If Lily Allen chooses to trash the standards of society, so that there is no sense of modesty when it comes to sexuality, then how can she expect men to act as if such standards existed?

There is a larger lesson here, which is that the effort of liberal society to understand freedom as autonomy doesn't work well when it comes to relationships. If the idea is to maximise our autonomous choice, then it's true that a woman can act however she likes sexually, but what she then loses is any right to ask that men don't do the same.

Lily Allen is Robin Thicke. She is his female counterpart, his twin. She is acting according to the same principles as he is. They are part of a bundle.

If he is wrong, then so is she.

What are the liberal advantages?

The liberal team has done better than our team over a long period of time. Therefore, we have to carefully consider where they have managed to get an advantage over us, so that we can learn to improve our game.

So how have liberals managed to do better? There are a range of answers that have been given to this question.

1. Class interests

It helps if your political philosophy serves the class interests of an influential and wealthy class of people in society.

Historically, liberalism had support from the Whig aristocracy (who wanted to contain royal power) and then from the rising commercial classes.

Traditionalists did have some support from the landed gentry, but the power of the landowning classes in general (in the UK) was broken by the early 1900s.

The situation now is that right-liberals tend to get support from business associations, whilst left-liberals get it from trade unions.

What could traditionalists have done to have preserved a base of support? One possible opportunity might have been to appeal to local manufacturers and manufacturing workers whose position was undermined by globalisation.

2. An institutional base

It was once the case that universities and the established churches were considered conservative institutions. But, as we know, they were captured by the left.

Without an institutional base it becomes much more difficult to assert influence in society. The lesson here is that institutions matter and have to be defended.

Traditionalists have to now consider either retaking existing institutions or building new ones.

3. The intellectual underlay

The way that Western intellectual history has developed has aided liberalism. Some of the commonly observed problems include:

i) Nominalism. A view that the world is made up of a collection of individual substances; there are no essences that give a common nature to classes of things.

ii) Scepticism. A view which doubts our capacity to obtain reliable knowledge of external reality.

iii) Scientism. The view that the methods employed in the natural sciences are the only authoritative way to gain knowledge of the world.

We have to take philosophy seriously and develop our own views in areas such as epistemology (theories of knowledge).

4. Moral persuasion

Liberals have learned to present their philosophy in highly moral terms, based on a certain understanding of freedom, equality and justice.

It has proved to be influential not just with those who are intellectual enough to wish to follow moral principles consistently, but also with those who wish emotionally to attach themselves to a moral cause.

What can we do? There are two ways of recovering ground here. The first is to criticise liberal morality, by bringing it back to its political starting points, by showing its internal inconsistencies and by demonstrating its destructive consequences. The second it to assert a morality of our own. We can do this by insisting on our own understanding of freedom, equality and justice and also by invoking other moral qualities, such as loyalty and patriotism.

We're not as good at this as we might be; we tend not to speak with moral conviction.

5. Creative spirit

Liberals often assume, as a starting point, a blank slate individual. So it's easy for us to think that we have a better understanding than liberals of human nature.

But what liberals have recognised about human nature is the existence of a core instinct to express a creative spirit in the world, for instance, by shaping the world around us and by making something of ourselves.

By attracting people in whom this creative spirit is strong, liberals have an advantage, as these are the kinds of people who are most likely to act in the world to bring about changes in society and within the human personality.

How can we make ground here? I think we have to emphasise our own understanding of a telos (a purpose or end) that individuals and communities seek to fulfil in life. We can't offer as open-ended a realm of creative spirit as liberals, but we can offer one that has greater depth and meaning, and that requires all our attributes of intellect, character, physique and spirit to carry through. We can return to an ideal of a public spirited man, one who seeks not only to defend what is best in his society and tradition, but to add to it creatively. We can make the term "progress" our own so that it has the sense of a creative effort to push forward and improve our own cultures and traditions.

Above all, we need to learn to speak and write in a way which expresses our own instinct to act creatively in the world. We must do this better than our liberal opponents.

A terrific quote

The Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre very elegantly and concisely describes what is wrong with liberalism in this brief passage:

Liberalism in the name of freedom imposes a certain kind of unacknowledged domination, and one which in the long run tends to dissolve traditional human ties and to impoverish social and cultural relationships. Liberalism, while imposing through state power regimes that declare everyone free to pursue whatever they take to be their own good, deprives most people of the possibility of understanding their lives as a quest for the discovery and achievement of the good, especially by the way in which it attempts to discredit those traditional forms of human community within which this project has to be embodied.

James Kalb: Out of the Antiworld

James Kalb has written an excellent article titled Out of the Antiworld. It's best to read it in its entirety, but I'd like to focus in this post on just one aspect of it.

James Kalb describes the liberal moral system in his article and it reinforces some of the points I have been trying to make in recent posts. According to Kalb, the liberal understanding of what makes something rational includes a scepticism about what can be known and this rules out the idea of an objective moral order, so that the focus is put instead on what is subjective:

The result is that nothing can be held to have a natural goal or reason for being, and the only meaning something can have for us is the meaning we give it. In such a setting, wanting to do something is what makes it worth doing, and the good can only be the satisfaction of preferences simply as such. Morality becomes an abstract system that has nothing substantive to say about how to live but only tells us to cooperate so we can all attain whatever our goals happen to be.

Given such a view, the uniquely rational approach to social order is to treat it as a soulless, technically rational arrangement for maximizing equal satisfaction of equally valid preferences. That principle claims to maximize effective freedom, but it narrowly limits what is permissible lest we interfere with the equal freedom of others or the efficient operation of the system. Private hobbies and indulgences are acceptable, since they leave other people alone. So are career, consumption, and expressions of support for the liberal order. What is not acceptable is any ideal of how people should understand their lives together that is at odds with the liberal one. Such ideals affect other people, if only by affecting the environment in which they live, and that makes them oppressive. If you praise the traditional family, you are creating an environment that disfavors some people and their goals, so you are acting as an oppressor.

The result is that the contemporary liberal state cannot allow people to take seriously the things they have always taken most seriously.

Liberals claim to stand for individual freedom, but if you have a system in which everyone must be equally free to do as they will, then you cannot assert as a good anything which might limit what other people do, or which might even create an environment which defines things according to one view rather than another.

When you look at what then individuals are really left free to do you find that they are mostly left with the more trivial of choices rather than the more significant ones. Career is perhaps one of the more important choices left to people, which might partly explain why most liberals are so focused on the good of career. Then there are consumer choices, entertainments and travel. These can all be chosen in a way that doesn't necessarily interfere with the choices of others (though even with careers there are issues about who should be favoured or not in employment).

And what is lost? In general the things that matter most to people, as these require a community to defend them as public goods. For instance, most people want to live within a traditional community of their own, one in which they have a sense of continuity over time, a link between generations and the transmission of a particular culture and heritage. But to realistically offer this choice to people means that you must have some sort of borders between different communities - otherwise distinctions are lost. And the liberal system of equal freedom doesn't allow for such borders, because it would mean asserting as a public good a measure that would limit the freedom of some people (those not within the community) to exercise a choice (to join the community). It would mean, in other words, discriminating between people in order to uphold an important public good, thereby violating the non-discrimination rule.

But going to the shops and choosing how to spend your money is OK. Or deciding to go to Bali rather than the Gold Coast is also OK. That becomes what defines us as liberal subjects, it even defines our dignity as human individuals in the liberal understanding of things. But to most people it seems a trivial base on which to try to build a sense of human dignity and flourishing. It is "equally free" but at a depressingly low level. Aspects of life that are meant to be secondary are what are left to us; we lose the traditional anchors of identity and meaning and motivation; and we find that public life is dominated by people from everywhere shopping together.

There is one other aspect of James Kalb's article I'd like to discuss, but I'll leave that for a future post.

Why then do liberals disallow some choices?

What do liberals believe about morality? I recently quoted Dr Leslie Cannold, an Australian ethicist, as follows:

Defining our own good, and living our lives in pursuit of it, is at the heart of a moral life.

So what matters to Dr Cannold is not what we happen to choose but that we get to define our own good.

There were readers of this site who doubted Dr Cannold's sincerity. They pointed out that traditionalists aren't allowed to define the good as we would like to and that certain choices that traditionalists would make are disallowed. Dr Cannold and other liberals, these readers claimed, are therefore not following a logical philosophy and are asserting their power in society in an arbitrary way.

But I don't think that's right. The liberal system logically forbids traditionalists to choose the kind of society we would like to have (by "logically" I don't mean that it's right that liberalism does this, but that the outcome follows from first principles).

It goes like this. Liberals believe in a freedom to self-determine. Therefore liberals don't want things that are predetermined to influence what we can or cannot choose to do.

But qualities like our sex and our race are predetermined. Therefore, a common liberal position is that:

i) it is permissible to freely identify with these qualities privately, i.e. as a matter of your own personal life

ii) it is wrong to assert these qualities in ways that might limit the choices that other people make.

You can, therefore, identify at a personal level with your own particular ancestry, but it would be considered wrong to deny someone entry as a migrant to your country on the basis of race. Similarly, you can choose to identify as a man or a woman, but you cannot select for employment on the basis of sex. If you deny someone an ability to choose on the basis of an unchosen, predetermined quality like their race or sex it is treated as discrimination based on these qualities, i.e. as "sexism" or "racism," and as a denial of equal opportunity.

So it is no use for a traditionalist to argue that his good is to have an immigration policy that leaves him with an ethnic homeland of his own or that his preference is for an army that does not employ women as combat troops, as both of these options discriminate on grounds that are unacceptable within the liberal system.

That's why traditionalists have to dig deeper and challenge liberalism on the basis of first principles. The issue to be fought is whether a freedom to self-determine is really an adequate basis on which to found a society. Traditionalists would argue that individual autonomy is not always and everywhere the overriding good to be pursued. To make it so is ultimately dissolving of the particular society you belong to. A wiser policy would be to accept a range of goods and to order them so that the social framework fits together (works together) to the greatest extent possible.

A couple of other observations. This aspect of liberalism, that you can hold to something as a private feeling but that you cannot assert it in a way that might limit what someone else can choose, explains those liberal politicians who talk positively about their own ancestry whilst enacting "non-discriminatory" migration policies which spell the end of particular ancestral identities.

The former Australian PM, Malcolm Fraser, was reportedly proud of his Scottish heritage, but was also an open borders man. An earlier PM, Sir Robert Menzies, was famous for his regard for his British heritage but oversaw the transformation of Australia into a mixed European nation. Menzies described his affection for his British heritage as being "sentimental" (a private sentiment rather than an identity to publicly uphold). A more recent PM, Paul Keating, identified not only with his Irish ancestry but with a strain of Australian larrikin culture - but, again, was fervently open-bordered. I have even heard some serving Labor MPs speak positively of their UK connections, but it would never cross their minds that such identities should be upheld through migration policy.

Finally, the argument has been raised that liberals aren't sincere in wanting people to self-define their own good and make their own autonomous choices, because the liberal state is happy to intrude paternalistically in discouraging smoking or in making people wear seat belts and so on.

But the seat belt or smoking issues don't really contravene liberal principles as these do not deny equal opportunity in the manner I described above but are rather "neutral" health measures that apply to everyone equally.

Is this Catholicism or liberalism?

The Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, has given a speech urging American Catholics to support the legalisation of millions of illegal immigrants.

What is particularly disturbing about the speech is that it is framed almost entirely within a political liberalism.

The archbishop breezily advocated the creation of a new America via immigration:

“Immigration,” he emphasized, “is a question about America.”

During his remarks, Archbishop Gomez addressed the root of the immigration debate by asking the questions that underlie the issue: “What does it mean to be an American? Who are we as a people and where are we heading as a country? What will the 'next America' look like?”

“What should the next America look like?”

Talk about a fast and loose attitude. There is no concern at all for upholding a people and a tradition, just a casual embrace of change from one America to the next.

Can such a fast and loose attitude really be confined to issues of national identity? If you're willing to throw out your nation this casually, then why not change your church or religion while you're at it. Why not ask "What should the next religion look like?"

To put this another way, most people don't compartmentalise the different strands of their own tradition. If we value our tradition, and see the good in it, and want to uphold it, then we are likely to want to hold to the different aspects of it, including our national identity and the religion associated with it.

But Archbishop Gomez wants us to be so careless of our tradition that we will throw away our national identity in favour of the next one - whilst still caring about the fate of the historic Western religion. He advocates that we adopt an attitude that is both careless and caring - a contradictory impulse that is unlikely to hold.

The archbishop then appealed to a liberal civic nationalism:

The archbishop noted G. K. Chesterton's comment that the U.S. is the only nation founded not on a material basis such as territory or race, but on a belief – a vision.

The Founding Fathers – the writers of the Declaration of Independence – envisioned a nation “where men and women from every race, religion and national background could live in equality.”

But these days all the Western nations hold to a liberal civic nationalism. It is not distinct at all - it makes America no different to Australia or Sweden or Canada. It is a mere pretence that such a nationalism makes America unique.

And here's another problem with basing a national identity on liberal values of equality and non-discrimination. Because every traditional society did discriminate in order to uphold its particularity, then they all failed the test of these values. Therefore, the past is looked on negatively in terms of how morally tainted it was. The archbishop himself has adopted this liberal mindset. He said,

The American Dream has always been “a work in progress...not fully delivered,” Archbishop Gomez told his listeners. Slavery, nativism, and race discrimination have always been blights upon that dream, the reality of which has been both “painful and partial.”

How can you maintain a sense of continuity and a love of tradition if you adopt this liberal understanding of what a nation should be? What does it mean if the word you use to describe the history of your tradition is "painful"?

And how would the church fare if it were held to the same standards? Should American Catholics turn their backs to the historic church because the church discriminated to maintain its sense of itself and of the good that it embodied? After all, the church did not ordain women. It discriminated against homosexuality. It did not see polygamy as being equal to monogamy. You might argue that the church would not be the church if it accepted everything as being equal; that, in fact, it would be pointless to have a church that accepted everything as equal - that it would no longer be meaningfully a church. And you would be right. But the same thing can be said of a nation. If a nation is universal then can it really be a nation?

Which brings me to a final point. Archbishop Gomez peppers his speech with appeals to liberal moral terms, such as diversity and anti-discrimination. This is unfortunate as these are the very moral concepts that are likely to increasingly impact on the church itself in America.

Why? These concepts derive from a liberal idea that what can be truly and definitively known about individuals are their wants and desires. These wants and desires therefore constitute the good that individuals seek, and so what matters is that they can be pursued equally without impediment. Therefore, if there is a morality, it is based on qualities of non-interference, i.e. on concepts of individual rights, of tolerance, inclusion and non-discrimination.

And so when the Catholic Church makes a different kind of moral pronouncement, one based on the idea that something is inherently right and wrong, and that it is so for all people (a non-relativist moral position) it is condemned by liberals as fundamentalist. What is more, it is thought to be judgemental and to violate principle of inclusiveness.

In a liberal morality, for instance, it makes no sense at all to oppose the idea of gay marriage. If that is what people want to do, then to respect their expression of desire equally means allowing them to do what they wish to do. It would be thought mere bigotry or a phobia or prejudice or discrimination to think otherwise. So why shouldn't the church be forced to agree to gay marriage or else face legal sanctions? If, that is, such a liberal morality really is legitimate.

But if it's not legitimate the church should not be using it to justify amnesty for illegal immigrants. It is a dangerous thing for the church to be supporting the use of liberal moral concepts when it wishes to do so, but then to suddenly swing around and object when these concepts are used against the church itself.

Ch.6 Morality

What kind of morality fits in best with liberalism?

I won’t attempt a complete answer here, as it’s such a complex topic. I can, though, point to some of the features of a liberal morality.

Liberals want the individual, above all, to be self-determining. Therefore, for liberals the moral thing is that our autonomy in choosing what to do remains unimpeded. It matters less what we choose than that we have freely chosen it.

This means that the “moral” thing is the act of defining for ourselves what the good is. That is why Dr Leslie Cannold, an Australian ethicist, claims that,

Defining our own good, and living our lives in pursuit of it, is at the heart of a moral life.

But this makes a liberal morality, at least in certain respects, permissive. It means that whatever we do is moral, as long as we have freely chosen to do it.

According to Dr Mirko Bargaric, an Australian human rights lawyer,

we are morally complete and virtuous individuals if we do as we wish so long as our actions do not harm others

The permissive nature of this formulation is clear enough: we are made perfectly moral simply by doing what we want, just as long as we don’t harm others.

Where does this leave traditional morality? It was traditional to believe that there are enduring, objective, knowable moral truths. Some behaviours, therefore, could be judged as being inherently right or wrong.

This doesn’t sit well with the liberal understanding of morality. It means that our behaviour is not entirely ours to determine; that there are rightly limitations on how we act; and that the source of these limitation is external to our own will.

For liberals, this will seem both artificial and oppressive. In a liberal culture, a traditional moral code will often be explained away as an act of power by one social group over another and traditional moral restraints are likely to be challenged in the name of personal liberation.

This makes liberal morality, in one of its phases at least, transgressive. Those who break traditional moral codes or taboos will be looked on favourably as paving the way forward, or perhaps as being cool and cutting-edge.

As an example, consider the case of Clare Edwards. She’s a young Perth woman who advertised in her local paper for sperm donors and then raised the resulting children on welfare. Her local paper, the Subiaco Post, praised her as representing the,

independent and can-do spirit of her generation, young people unbounded by the conventions of older generations

She is morally virtuous, according to the paper, not because she followed an action that is inherently good, but because she acted independently (autonomously) by breaking a moral convention.

Finding a moral language

But what happens if you’re a liberal and you want to object to something on moral grounds? It might be difficult for you to find the language to express your moral objections. After all, if anything that people freely choose to do is moral, then how can you criticise someone’s choices?

One way that a liberal can object to something on moral grounds is to claim that a choice hasn’t been freely made. Perhaps the choice has been coerced in some way, or perhaps it isn’t an authentic want but has been made for the benefit of others.

As an example of this, consider the attitude of Mia Freedman to raunch culture. Mia Freedman was once an editor of the Australian women’s magazines Cosmopolitan and Cleo. When, though, she had a daughter of her own she turned against the raunch culture peddled to young women (in magazines like the ones she edited):

Raunch culture alarms me horribly, especially as I get older and now that I'm the parent of a daughter. Women embrace it because of the shock value, but that will wear off...

Her moral disapproval, though, met resistance from her own mother:

Ironically, I've found myself having to explain to my mother why raunch culture is not a good thing. She's like, "But hang on, isn't this what we fought for as feminists? For women to be able to express themselves in whatever way they choose and reclaim their sexuality?”

Mia Freedman made this reply:

I said, this is different. It's not about women having a threesome because they want to have one. It's about a girl pashing another girl in a nightclub to impress a boy. If it was an organic expression of how they feel, I'd say go for it.

This is all very liberal. The debate is not about whether the acts themselves are moral or not, but about whether women are truly following their own wants. The mother is still in transgressive mode: she is focused on the struggle to break down moral impediments to women’s behaviour. The daughter agrees that there should be no impediments, but she argues that young women are not following their own, authentic wants.

It’s not a very effective way to express a moral objection. All that the young women pursuing a raunch culture have to do to meet this objection is to affirm that they are, indeed, doing what they do to empower themselves, rather than to please boys.

And that’s why actions are often justified in a liberal society in terms of agency, empowerment and free will. These are qualities which are supposed to prove that our choices are authentically ours – which then makes our actions moral.

A good example of this is the controversy surrounding a Nandos TV advertisement. The ad featured a pole dancing mother, naked except for a g-string, thrusting her backside at men for tips, before returning home to her family with a chicken dinner. After public complaints, the ad was brought before the Australian Advertising Standards Bureau. Nandos defended the ad on the basis that the mother:

was clearly in charge of her own destiny. The woman we depict in the commercial is shown to be intelligent, in control and making her own choices. She is not being coerced by the man in any way. She is acting in accordance with her own free will … Many women see the open display of female sexuality as a forthright display of empowerment.

The Board agreed that the woman was portrayed in a way that made it clear that she was not coerced and that therefore there was nothing to object to in the ad:

The Board noted many complaints about the depiction of a mother and wife as a pole dancer/prostitute … The Board considered that this advertisement depicted a strong in control woman who went about her work in a professional manner (wearing a suit to work), enjoyed her work, enjoyed being 'sexy' and enjoyed time with her family. The Board considered that this advertisement depicted the woman as being a strong and empowered woman.

The moral issue is no longer whether it is right to show a mother prostituting herself for money in a TV ad, but whether or not the woman is portrayed as making an authentically free choice. And to make it clear that it really is an authentic choice the person doing it is described as strong, empowered, in control and enjoying what they do.

Here’s another example of this logic at work. In an American newspaper burlesque dancing was defended on these grounds:

DeLuxe said burlesque ... represented a rebellion against the restrictive morality of the time ... Modern burlesque performers are clearly in charge of their own destiny ... "The woman doing it is completely in control of her own sexuality. She decides."

This is a dual defence. First, burlesque is defended as being transgressive: as liberating individuals from “the restrictive morality of the time”. Second, it is emphasised that the burlesque dancers are entirely uncoerced, that they are in control and in charge of what they doing.

In short, it is difficult to express moral disapproval of an act by claiming that a choice is inauthentic. This is too easily met by the counterclaim that a choice is empowering or is a genuine expression of someone’s agency.

There are other ways that liberals can try to express moral disapproval. They can argue about whether someone has genuinely consented to an act, but this in practice places few limits on what people might do.

Liberals can also invoke the no harm principle, the idea that anything is permissible as long as it doesn’t harm others. But the general thrust of this principle is a permissive one; it seems to be understood as meaning “As long as you don’t physically injure or steal from anyone else, you can do whatever”. So, again, it’s not very useful for expressing moral concerns.

Finally, liberals can talk in a more abstract way about the need for people to show respect. This is a more useful option for liberals as the notion of respect doesn’t necessarily rule anything out and at the same time it can be used to appeal to people’s moral natures.

This can sometimes result in mixed messages. For instance, men might have it drummed into them that they must respect women, whilst at the same time living in an “anything goes” lad and ladette culture.

A case in point involves an Australian ethicist, Professor Catharine Lumby. She rejects morality on the basis that it isn’t something that is self-defined:

Morality is a blueprint for living that someone hands to you.

She prefers the idea of “ethics” as this is something that can be individually negotiated:

Ethics is a zone we all enter when we find ourselves, by choice or necessity, negotiating those rules.

What matters to a liberal like Professor Lumby is not what is chosen, but that we ourselves get to do the choosing.

In 2004, she was appointed by the National Rugby League to educate rugby players about sexual ethics, following complaints about some players having group sex with young women. She made it clear that she did not believe in an objective, knowable moral good:

The idea that group sex is abhorrent is a very particular view. What matters is that we avoid asserting moral beliefs as moral truths.

What did matter was the issue of consent:

ABC reporter: There have been stories of a culture of group sex in rugby league. What do you think of group sex? Do you think it's OK if it's consensual?

Lumby: Speaking as an academic, I think that there's no problem with any behaviour which is consensual in sexual terms.

She also added that there must be respect:

[Lumby] has since said what matters isn't that players use women in group sex, but that they treat these women with respect...

But here’s the problem. The police who investigated the complaints against the rugby players found no evidence of a lack of consent. Whatever damage was done happened despite consent being given.

Second, if Lumby were right we would have to believe that young rugby players are going to develop an attitude of respect for women who consent to casual group sex. It’s that mixed message that tells young men that there are no real moral standards, and that therefore anything goes, but that they should still in a more old-fashioned way have respect for women.

Andrew Bolt picked up on this point when he questioned how Professor Lumby could,

imagine sportsmen boozily sharing some groupie they've picked up for a gang-bang and treating her with courtesy. As an equal. With respect...

Yes, Lumby really seems to think that's how gang bangs work. Or could, if only we left our sad old morality on the chair with our jeans.

Intrusive

So far I have described the permissive side of a liberal morality, the one which is focused on the idea that something is moral if you freely choose to do it.

But liberalism doesn’t always strike people as permissive. There is a logic by which liberalism generates a highly strung morality of its own, one which tends, if anything, to be intrusive or even authoritarian.

How does this aspect of a liberal morality come about? In part, it has to do with the liberal belief in individual autonomy. Liberals believe that an autonomous, self-determining life is the basis of human freedom and dignity. But this then requires liberals to make predetermined qualities like our sex and ethnicity not matter, at least in a social setting.

But these predetermined qualities are basic to life. They help to shape our identities and our relationships and are not easy to suppress.

And so liberals have had to force their own moral code on the rest of society. They have used state power to enforce speech codes; they have created at times a stifling atmosphere of political correctness; and they have used their influence in the institutions to intimidate those who would otherwise speak out.

Remember too that liberals believe that they are upholding human freedom and dignity. This means that those who oppose liberalism are thought to be denying basic goods in life to other people. They are thought, in other words, to hold morally indefensible views and are often criticised using highly charged moral terms such as “sexist” or “bigot”. Opposition to liberalism is often treated (by liberals) as a moral or intellectual failing (a result of prejudice or ignorance) rather than as a legitimate difference of opinion in philosophy or politics or values.

A conundrum

How else does a liberal morality become intrusive? In theory, liberalism is supposed to maximise individual autonomy, so that individuals can choose freely for themselves what they can do or be.

But there is an inbuilt limitation to this freedom of choice. For instance, let’s say that women have to choose whether to stay at home to look after their children or to go to work.

There is a conundrum here for a liberal morality. If women choose to stay at home then the aim of maximising autonomy is contravened, as these women will be thought to be dependent on their husbands for support. But if these women are not given the choice to stay at home, then that too contravenes the aim of maximising autonomy, as they have a restriction placed on their freedom of choice.

There is no principled way out for liberalism here, so there are endless debates about what the true liberal position is. However, in practice what happens is that the choices that don’t fit in well with liberalism are gradually made more difficult to make. There is either social or economic pressure placed on individuals to make the “right” choice (by liberal standards) rather than having a genuinely free choice.

It is a case of individuals being manoeuvred into the “correct” choices over time. In other words, if the end goal is to maximise autonomy, then people will be expected to make choices which maximise autonomy – they will be discouraged from giving priority to other goods which they themselves find significant.

Non-interference

For liberals, it is the act of choosing which makes something moral. But if I choose something which deprives someone else of their freedom to choose, the liberal system no longer works. It would mean that I get to be a moral agent, but the other person doesn’t. It would mean that I get to enjoy human freedom and dignity at the expense of someone else.

Therefore, in order to make a liberal moral system work, liberals emphasise moral qualities of non-interference. The aim is to not infringe on how other people define the good, or the moral choices that other people make. This leads liberals to recognise as virtues qualities such as tolerance, openness, inclusiveness and respect, as well as an acceptance of diversity, non-discrimination, pluralism and non-judgementalism.

It sounds like an easy going moral focus, but in practice it’s not. If you are thought to violate a morality of non-interference, it is held to be an offensive and dangerous act in which you are denying an equal status to others and infringing on their human rights and dignity.

This can make liberals very intolerant of what they see as violations of their moral system. It leads to a seeming contradiction: liberals can be amongst the most judgemental in society in the name of a non-judgemental morality and they can be the most fiercely hostile in condemning what they disagree with whilst at the same time preaching the virtue of tolerance.

There is another problem with a liberal morality of non-interference: it is dissolving of the society which adopts it.

A morality of non-interference is silent when it comes to the kinds of qualities that might uphold a tradition, such as loyalty or love of country. All that is required of the liberal moral actor is a kind of neutrality, a willingness to accept whatever other individuals define as the good.

And when people are persuaded that neutrality is the correct moral position, they are more likely to take the role of passive observers who move amongst other cultures and traditions rather than asserting one of their own.

Even if the liberal moral actor does identify positively with his own tradition, he is likely to see this as his own self-defined or self-created good that applies to himself alone. His love for his own tradition loses the status of an objective good to be defended more generally at a public level. This leaves traditions undefended; they can be appreciated individually, but not upheld as a common good.

There is also a logic by which a liberal morality leads not just to neutrality but to an active bias against one’s own tradition.

A liberal morality emphasises qualities such as diversity, non-discrimination and inclusiveness. That can make traditional communities, based on particularity, seem immoral. The criticism will be raised that traditional communities, rather than being diverse, are too homogeneous and monocultural, and that instead of being inclusive and non-discriminatory, that they are exclusive of others.

Also, if you believe that the most virtuous person is the one who is most committed to qualities like diversity, inclusion and non-discrimination, then you might attempt to show your superior virtue by identifying with whoever is thought to be most “other” to your own society. This is how you can display your commitment to inclusion and pluralism and other similar qualities.

But if this is how superior virtue is demonstrated, then it can become a mark of elite moral status to demonstrate solidarity with those most alien to your tradition, rather than with those you are most closely related to.

This encourages a split between the social elite and the rank and file. The elite see the rank and file as morally backward in comparison to themselves and instead of a solidarity based on a shared tradition the elite look instead to those who are thought to be the least connected to this tradition.

Demoralising

If a single, general criticism of liberal morality had to be made it would be that a liberal morality is not “moralising” but rather demoralising.

The liberal approach makes our moral acts largely meaningless. If something is made moral because I freely choose it, then it doesn’t really matter what I choose. One act is as good as another as long as it is my authentic want.

It’s true that a liberal might see the act of choosing itself as a moral thing, but that is hardly a great moral achievement. It’s not that difficult to follow our own wants.

In contrast, the challenge in the preliberal past was to discern a moral course of action and to discipline ourselves to it. That was part of the cultivation of character and a quest for moral excellence.

Furthermore, in the past it was thought that in acting morally we were connecting with a higher good, that is to say, with objective, enduring, moral truths that transcend the self. But a liberal morality does not transcend the self, it remains at the level of our own subjective wants.

Nor can a liberal morality satisfy our need to belong to a moral community. It is difficult to establish moral ideals or standards when the emphasis is on each individual defining his own good and tolerating others doing the same. How can a moral standard, in the sense of a limit on what is considered acceptable, be upheld within this framework? Whatever the least morally refined are willing to do will set the new low point of what is acceptable within society. You end up with a morality of the lowest common denominator.

Yes, liberals attempt to overcome this loss of moral community by focusing on the values of non-interference as the new moral standards. We are thought to be good people if we hold to these qualities and villains if we don’t. And if our community keeps to the values of non-interference we are allowed to hold it in positive regard; if it doesn’t, we are supposed to feel a collective moral shame.

But this reworking of moral community is in itself demoralising. Did communities in the past keep to liberal values of non-interference? They didn’t because they were concerned to defend their particularity. There is a good chance, therefore, that when liberals do ask whether they can hold their community in a positive regard, that they will answer negatively. The past will never measure up to liberal values and so liberals might either turn away from their heritage, or focus on the idea of a morally progressive present generation starting anew, or else have a sense that the past is something to associate with collective shame or guilt.

There do exist liberals who take a more upbeat approach. These liberals take pride in how their society has led the way in promoting liberal values. They have a positive sense of their society as a moral community.

But this too puts the members of that society in a difficult position. They are being asked to base their positive regard for their community on the observance of a moral code that is, as we saw previously, dissolving of their own particular tradition. What is given with one hand is taken away with the other.

Who?

In a liberal morality, we ourselves make something moral by choosing it freely. We ourselves get to define the good (for us).

I hope I have succeeded in suggesting the kinds of problems that this starting point leads to. But there remains one last question to be answered. If we ourselves don’t get to define the good, then who does?

That’s the response often made by liberals when their moral system is questioned. Liberals are fearful that someone else will assume the responsibility for determining how they should act morally. Who, they ask, could possibly be entrusted with the authority for deciding what is moral?

The answer is that there is no single person with such authority.

The way that individuals within a society come to an understanding of what is moral is complex. We might have a moral intuition, or a sense derived from conscience, of what is inherently moral or immoral. We might also learn from the consequences of actions what it is that brings harm to ourselves or others. We might use moral reasoning to ensure that our moral beliefs are logically consistent. Our moral sense might be derived as well from the inherited experience of a community, of what the best minds have thought over time, or of how a community has learnt over many generations from its mistakes. Or perhaps we might learn from role models within the community who we particularly admire. It is possible that we might be influenced as well by our function in society; a soldier, for instance, might be oriented to qualities like courage and loyalty, whilst for a small trader qualities of industry and honesty might loom larger. It will often be the case as well that religious texts and traditions will influence the moral code of a society.

And the moral sense we derive from all this has to be fitted together, so that the different aspects of reality are appropriately ordered.

It is not the case that one person in society can be delegated to suddenly decide on all this. Instead, it is an ongoing process of a whole society, a continuing attempt to refine the moral understanding. This process takes place within families, schools, universities, churches, political parties, parliaments and the media. Both the fine arts and popular culture have an influence.

It is impossible to guarantee that a society will get it completely right, but the closer a society approaches to getting it right, the more likely it is to stay on course in its development and to retain the loyalty and love of its members.

Next chapter: Trivial pursuits

Does Pope Francis want a Muslim Europe?

Pope Francis has chosen as his first papal visit the island of Lampedusa. This is an island belonging to Italy but close to the African coastline. It is where Muslim Africans seeking to enter Europe illegally head for.

In a sermon on Lampedusa, Pope Francis made it clear that he supports the migration of Muslims into Europe "on their voyage toward something better". He said,

I give a thought, too, to the dear Muslim immigrants that are beginning the fast of Ramadan, with best wishes for abundant spiritual fruits. The Church is near to you in the search for a more dignified life for yourselves and for your families. I say to you “O’ scia’!” [trans.: a friendly greeting in the local dialect].

This doesn't bode well for the Church under Pope Francis. First, it means that the Church is committing itself to a false and unorthodox understanding of solidarity. Second, it means that the Church is orienting itself toward fitting in with secular liberal modernity rather than standing against it.

I knew immediately when I first read about the Pope's visit (hat tip: Laura Wood) that this was an expression of a certain understanding of solidarity. And, sure enough, in the Pope's sermon he takes solidarity as his theme. For instance, he says in reference to those Muslim African immigrants who drowned chancing the voyage to Lampedusa:

These our brothers and sisters seek to leave difficult situations in order to find a little serenity and peace, they seek a better place for themselves and for their families – but they found death. How many times do those who seek this not find understanding, do not find welcome, do not find solidarity!

Why call this a false understanding of solidarity? It is false because it is part of the tendency to redefine solidarity as meaning compassion for the "suffering other". Who could be more "other" to Europeans than Muslim Africans? Therefore, it is with them that we are to find solidarity.

There is a disastrous logic to this understanding of solidarity. If we are to welcome and find solidarity precisely with those most different to us, then we will necessarily dissolve our own existence. If solidarity requires Europe to welcome African Muslims, then the long-term result will be the dissolution of a European Christianity. Pope Francis is following a policy that will ultimately dissolve his own church.

In truth, solidarity is based on relatedness, and the particular loves and duties which flow from these forms of relatedness. Therefore, I am commanded to honour my father and mother, because of the close and particular relationship I have with them. I am to provide for and protect my wife and children as part of my duties as a husband and father. I am not to shame my family name, nor to be disloyal to my ethnic kin. And, yes, it is true that I am also to be hospitable to the stranger, as I do have a degree of relatedness to him as someone made, like me, in the image of God. But my duty, and my compassion, toward the stranger, does not oblige me to do harm to those I am more closely connected to.

That is why the Catholic Church developed the ordo caritatis:

The exercise of charity would soon become injudicious and inoperative unless there be in this, as in all the moral virtues, a well-defined order...

The precedence is plain enough...Regarding the persons alone, the order is somewhat as follows: self, wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, domestics, neighbours, fellow-countrymen, and all others.

That is the orthodox Catholic position. So why are so many churchmen reversing the order of charity?

Unfortunately, I think it has to do with an ongoing dispute in the Church about how the Church should relate to the secular liberal world around it.

The last pope, Pope Benedict, early in his life supported Vatican II, which was supposed to lead to the Church being more open to the secular world. But over time he saw how the principles of liberal modernity clashed with those of the Church and he took the view that the Church would have to resist, rather than join in with, the trends within the larger society.

Pope Benedict was very skilled in describing the principles of liberal modernity and how they could not be reconciled with those of Christianity. In particular, this is true of his writings on gender and the family (see here and here). But even on issues of communal identity he was critical of trends within secular liberalism. For instance he said:

This case illustrates a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost all capacity for self-love. All that it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. What Europe needs is a new self-acceptance, a self-acceptance that is critical and humble, if it truly wishes to survive.

Multiculturalism, which is so passionately promoted, can sometimes amount to an abandonment and denial, a flight from one's own things

He also opposed the idea of Turkish admission to the European Union on these grounds:

In the course of history, Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe. Making the two continents identical would be a mistake. It would mean a loss of richness, the disappearance of the cultural to the benefit of economics.

But there is a significant section of the Church which wishes to reconcile itself with liberal modernity. And one way that this can be achieved is for the Church to emphasise the theme of "solidarity with the stranger" because that fits in well with the liberal belief in "solidarity with the other".

Where do liberals get this belief in solidarity with the other?  I think it has to do with the way that liberal morality has developed over time. Liberals believe in autonomy as the overriding good. Therefore, they believe that what matters is that we are unimpeded in freely choosing what we do, i.e. what matters is the free choice, rather than what we choose.

However, this requires us to not infringe on other people making free choices. Therefore, a liberal morality will also emphasise qualities of non-interference, such as openness, diversity, tolerance and non-discrimination. So these become the liberal equivalents to positive virtues. And how then do you show that you are the most virtuous? You have to be the one who is most open and tolerant and non-discriminating and welcoming of diversity.

And how do you show this? You show this by identifying with (and being in solidarity with) the people who are most "other" to your own society. Hence the liberal cult of the other.

So can you be a good Catholic and also a good liberal? Not really, given that liberals don't generally believe in objective forms of morality and, as Pope Benedict pointed out, the liberal pursuit of autonomous freedom is incompatible with the Christian tradition. But those Catholics who want to approach liberal modernity can do so by emphasising the idea of "solidarity with the other". That's where a point of crossover can be constructed.

Further reading on this issue:

Upholding the four relationships

Losing the particular

Left-wing woman criticises feminism

Chelsea Fagan, a decidedly left-wing woman, makes the following criticism of feminism:

Everywhere from Tumblr to Twitter to Facebook groups, there are women getting together and talking about what it means to be both a woman and a feminist. And in many of these circles, there is a heavy focus on “male privilege,” and what that means in an operational sense. There are near-endless blogs dedicated to pointing out everything from the microaggressions to the sweeping legislation which subjugate women. And as the (righteous) anger against some of the institutional disadvantages women face brews, it manifests in a number of ways. “Misandry” has become a cute term to express one’s disgust for the patriarchy. “Kill all men” is another. They are small slogans and concepts which aim to take back a sense of control, of autonomy. The expression of hatred towards men — one regarded as benign because of the lack of societal power behind it — has become a kind of social currency in many more radical feminist circles. It wouldn’t be shocking to see a 16-year-old white girl’s Tumblr with a picture of her holding a heart-shaped card emblazoned with “I Love Misandry” and surrounded by sparkles. It’s cute, and it’s harmless.

But the idea of leveraging a universal hatred against men, or allowing ourselves to feel as though there is a clear divide in terms of gendered power, and that it falls distinctly on the men vs. women line, fuels a slippery slope of profound privilege denying. Because to pretend as though the 22-year-old white female blogger talking about her hatred of men from the comfort of her prepaid dorm at an Ivy League school does not hold many tangible privileges over, say, the undocumented male worker who is cleaning the bathroom stalls of her building at night, is ludicrous. There are countless privileges she has over him, and countless points of access she has in our society that he will never see.
 

To sum up: feminists believe that men are privileged at the expense of women and this leads to anger and, amongst radical feminists, to expressions of misandry (hatred of men) as a means of reasserting female autonomy. As it is assumed that women are a victim class, such hatred is thought to be toothless and therefore harmless.

Chelsea Fagan points out, reasonably enough, that this set of feminist beliefs fails at the first step, as the women making claims about male privilege are often a lot more privileged than large numbers of men in society (she could also have pointed out that the average man works hard in life for the benefit of wife and children rather than to subjugate women, so a measure of gratitude or love is a more appropriate response than anger).

It's a good criticism of the simplistic "group rankings" which occur in a liberal society: if you belong to a group which has been tagged as privileged you lose status in society, regardless of your own circumstances.

Even so, it would be better to ditch the leftist moral focus on privilege rather than merely to refine it.

Chelsea Fagan claims that intersections of privilege and oppression define our lives, but she is wrong. I am not defined by the fact that there are people more privileged than I am in society. There will always be distinctions in status, wealth, intelligence and education. That does not detract from my identity as a man, or as a member of a particular family, ethny or nation, or as a member of a church or a community.

Nor should questions of privilege determine moral status in society. If a man has more wealth and status than I do, that does not make him of lesser moral status; I would ask instead about his integrity, his character, his embodiment of culture, his contribution to society, the quality of his role as a father and husband, his loyalty to the larger tradition he belongs to and so on.

Are there liberal virtues?

The starting point of liberal morality is very different to the end point.

The starting point is a generally permissive one. Liberals don't have such a sense that there are acts which are objectively good or bad. In other words, when an individual makes a moral choice, liberals aren't so concerned what that choice is; rather, the moral good is in individuals making autonomous, self-determining choices - choices of their own.

But the end point of liberalism is a highly coercive and intrusive one. So the question is how do you get from the permissive starting point (you can choose to be or do anything) to what is sometimes called the soft tyranny of a liberal social order?

I think there are two ways that this happens. The first is the one that I often discuss at this site. If the moral good is the freedom of the individual to make self-determining choices, then what matters is that impediments be removed to such choices.

But there are many important aspects of self, identity and relationships that are not self-determined but predetermined. So these things, including our sex and our ethnicity, have to be made not to matter in a liberal order. People who think or act as if they do matter will get caught in accusations of sexism or racism - the famous "isms" that are thrown around endlessly in a liberal society.

Already, then, there has been a shift from a permissive "do whatever" or "you yourself get to choose what is right or wrong" to a more aggressive stance about what is allowed to matter morally. And this moral stance is more intrusive than preliberal moral codes because it is set against beliefs, identities and relationships that are basic to human nature and the human experience.

There's a second aspect to all this which I haven't discussed as much previously. Liberalism is distinct amongst modern movements in wanting to develop a system in which each individual will gets to self-determine its own choices.

The idea, in other words, is that rather than will being expressed for everyone through the choices of a leader or a party, it will be expressed equally by every individual.

If you commit to this kind of system, then it will be thought both dangerous and wrong for people to impose the pursuit of their own self-determining choices to the detriment of the choices of others. That will be thought to violate the ideal of an equal expression of choice.

This then leads to further concepts of right and wrong within a liberal order. It becomes "correct" to adopt a moral attitude not only of equality, but of "non-interference" or "non-infringement" (as the aim is that individuals are left within their own orbits to pursue their own individual choices, unimpeded by those of others).

A "good" liberal will therefore focus on moral qualities that show a commitment to "non-interference" or "non-infringement" of others such as respect, tolerance, non-judgementalism, openness, anti-discrimination, inclusion, diversity and acceptance (as well as fostering a general attitude of "equality").

Also, if the aim is non-infringement this will create a moral focus on individual rights, and if we wish to show ourselves to be open and non-judgemental, we will additionally consider prejudice and bigotry to be primary moral failings.

But why, if liberalism arrives in this roundabout way at a moral attitude derived from "non-infringement", do we finish up with a morality which is so often experienced as oppressive, intrusive and demoralising?

There are several reasons that explain why a liberal morality is demoralising. People generally wish to live in a moral community. But liberalism distorts the usual expression of moral belief, first because it is highly permissive in some areas and second because it is silent in others. The cluster of moral qualities that liberalism recognises all relate to non-infringement, whereas the positive qualities of character that were once widely recognised as virtues, such as loyalty or prudence, are no longer vitally present.

Another reason for demoralisation is that a liberal morality is destabilising to the larger communities that people feel connected to. If it is a virtue to be open and non-discriminating, and if there are thought to be no other moral considerations that might act at times as a counterweight, then a community loses a choice to maintain its own distinctive character.

There are also serious ruptures in the normal ties of solidarity within a community. The liberal morality encourages the elite to identify not with the ordinary members of their own community, but with whoever is thought to be most other or most different. After all, if the entire moral structure is based on being open, non-discriminatory and inclusive then the most virtuous person will be the one who identifies least with his own and most with the "other".

And there's another reason for the rupturing of solidarity. The way to lose moral status and standing within a liberal society is if you are thought to have disregarded the liberal moral virtues by imposing your own self-determining choices to the detriment of the choices of others. This will define you as a privileged class and whichever class you are thought to have deprived will be able to make claims against you.

And so liberal politics, in practice, reintroduces the categories it wants not to matter, but as hostile political forces ("identity politics"), based on the assumption that the very existence of these categories relates to a dynamic of oppression and resistance. For social reality to be perceived in this way is not only demoralising to a sense of social solidarity (e.g. with the sexes set against each other), it will also be felt to be oppressive by those who fall into whatever classes are tagged as oppressors.

Finally, it doesn't matter in the long run if the liberal morality has its origins in non-infringement or non-interference. Once certain qualities are defined as morally authoritative, then they will become the standard for the society as a whole. They can then be imposed either by the state or within the culture in a highly intrusive and coercive way.

Elizabeth Wurtzel: the lonely apartment

Elizabeth Wurtzel is a 45-year-old American feminist, most famous for being the author of Prozac Nation.

She is in a state of lament at the moment. She describes in a recent column how last year a female neighbour harassed her to the point that she fled her apartment to a local park:

It had all gone wrong. At long last, I had found myself vulnerable to the worst of New York City, because at 44 my life was not so different from the way it was at 24. Stubbornly and proudly, emphatically and pathetically, I had refused to grow up...I was alone in a lonely apartment with only a stalker to show for my accomplishments and my years.

...I am harsh and defeated, and I never thought I would describe myself in either way. The list of things I can’t be bothered with goes on forever.

It's not that she didn't have chances:

When I was still in my twenties, for several years I had this wonderful boyfriend; I'll call him Gregg—he's the one we're all waiting for: tall, blue-eyed, with this thick black hair, all smart and sensitive...It was young and romantic. You'd have thought we were happy. I think really we were happy. He was good for me...I could have and probably should have spent the rest of my life with him....

But she wanted open-endedness:

But something went wrong—terribly wrong...I became seasick with contentment...I needed a sense that this wasn't the end of the story...Every day would be the same, forever: The body, the conversation, it would never change—isn't that the rhythm of prison?

My imagination, my ability to understand the way love and people grow over time, how passion can surprise and renew, utterly failed me. I was temporarily credentialed with this delicate, yummy thing—youth, beauty, whatever—and my window of opportunity for making the most of it was so small, so brief. I wanted to smash through that glass pane and enjoy it, make it last, feel released.

And so, I cheated on him. With everyone I could...
 

But it's now too late to change her mind:

Oh, to be 25 again and get it right...there are some mistakes that one is eventually too old—either literally or spiritually—to correct. I can't go back.
 

So what went wrong? She gives lots of clues. She freely admits that she is stuck in adolescence:

I live in the chaos of adolescence, even wearing the same pair of 501s.

...I have no ability to compromise...in my case, it is about feeling trapped when I am doing something I don’t like, and it is probably more childish than anything else...it has also meant that I have not disciplined myself into the kinds of commitments that make life beyond the wild of youth into a haven of calm.

She seems to have picked up on the liberal ideal of autonomy, in which what matters is that choices are your own, rather than that your choices are oriented to the good:

It had never occurred to me before that any of the choices I made, which I prized, I guess because at least they were mine, were crazy or risky; but I was becoming convinced.
 

Likewise, she believes, as a feminist, that women should be autonomous in the sense of being self-sufficient and independent of men:

I am committed to feminism and don’t understand why anyone would agree to be party to a relationship that is not absolutely equal. I believe women who are supported by men are prostitutes, that is that, and I am heartbroken to live through a time where Wall Street money means these women are not treated with due disdain.

Think about what that last paragraph means. She obviously doesn't see men and women as having complementary social roles, with men being providers and women nurturers. To her that's not an equal relationship and it's a cash transaction, rather than an expression of love and a realisation of our distinct being as men and women.

But if men and women can't connect through those drives and instincts, what is left to connect them? Well, one answer is what feminists used to call "free love" - men and women pursuing sex and romantic feeling with each other, but leaving as soon as the impulse fades. And Elizabeth Wurtzel seems to have lived her life on the principle of free love, seeing it as more pure and principled:

I am proud that I have never so much as kissed a man for any reason besides absolute desire... I believe in true love and artistic integrity

....For a while after my first book came out, I went home with a different man every night and did heroin every day...Even now, I am always in love—or else I am getting over the last person or getting started with the next one.  

If you want to cling forever to an adolescent mindset of not choosing but keeping things open-ended; if you believe that the primary good is choice itself; and if you reject complementary social roles for men and women in favour of a floating sexual and emotional connection, then you might well end up with a lifestyle like the one pursued by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Perhaps there were times when she had some fun with it, but by her own account it has left her lonely and insecure and fearful of the life ahead of her.

And, obviously, it is no basis for a society to reproduce itself. She was only ever willing to commit to a dog, so there's been no marriage and children. If everyone lived on the same basis, a society wouldn't endure for more than a single generation.

One final thought. Elizabeth Wurtzel sees herself as a free spirit; in particular, she likes the youthful feeling of endless, open-ended possibilities in life. But what that misses are other aspects of the human spirit, such as the benefits of "connectedness", such as to family, home, community, people and place. A person who focuses solely on being a free spirit in Elizabeth Wurtzel's sense risks bringing upon themselves a demoralising sense of alienation.