Three Values and Three Movements
Equality. Liberty. Virtue. These are all features which all citizens of almost every state will agree are good and required for a civil and stable union in some measure. I’ve claimed before that today’s progressive/liberals, libertarians and conservatives differ largely in that the different groups differ in the relative importance they place on these values. That is liberal/progressives value equality the most, libertarians liberty, and conservatives virtue. And it’s not that progressive/liberals find virtue or liberty bad, just that these things are less important than equality and so forth.
What does it mean that one values virtue in a civic sense? There are certainly things it should not mean but often does, that is often this is confused with the idea that particular virtues are required and preeminent. The Greek political thinkers thought that the primary purpose of the state was to create an environment in which the virtues of its citizens would and could be cultivated. Virtue for them was the road to happiness. In our day and age, so many confuse happiness with pleasure and therefore forget the importance of virtue. Now, the Greek city states were small enough that a much more pronounced uniformity of opinion about what constitutes virtue could be established in one community. This helped of course but is not essential.
C.S. Lewis in the The Abolition of Man suggests the notion of a universal sense of right and wrong within all people. Put in the context of virtue, there is a common core notion of what virtues are which all societies and people hold common. Different societies value different virtues with varying gradings and, again at the periphery, some virtues are thought vices and vice-versa, for example modern educators think self-esteem is a virtue and many Christian fathers taught self-esteem a vice. The existence of these differences is however often used mistakenly to suggest that the common notions of virtues in the main are held all cultures and societies.
From the standpoint of political thought and theory however the matter is that a multicultural society, of which most of us belong, can and should foster the development of virtues in its citizens and that this can be done without prejudicing which virtues its citizens value and are being in effect fostered and developed by the state. The primary purpose then of a state is to create an environment in which its citizens can cultivate virtue. So that we can be come better, happier as individuals. As a consequence this requires freedoms (liberty) and equality. But the goal of that liberty (and therefore also where it may and might be restricted) is to foster virtue. Again, where the purpose of equality between citizens is to allow each to cultivate his or her own virtues. Enforcement and encouragement of that equality is not for the purpose of granting equality qua equality to each but to allow each full opportunities to cultivate individual virtue.
Filed under: Conservative • Liberal • Mark O.
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That is liberal/progressives value equality the most, libertarians liberty, and conservatives virtue.
I suspect that you can in no way quantify or demonstrate this to be true. It’s just your hunch, right?
For my part, I don’t know that I value any over the other, but if did I value one the most, it would probably be liberty.
Dan,
Tell me why liberal/progressives push social welfare legislature? My guess it’s a fairness=equality motive (not a Liberty one).
Dan,
For example, how is “single payer” or unified health plan legislation a “liberty” issue in that it restricts choices and freedoms. It is specifically a removal of liberty by restricting choices.
I’m not especially well-informed on issues of health care, but on social justice issues we tend to fight for them for reasons of yet another value, Justice, and/or perhaps yet another value, Mercy.
We don’t want (no one I know, anyway) to see welfare assistance so that everyone can be equal in terms of what they have. Not in the least is that a motivation for a single person I know (and I am surrounded by social workers and social justice organizers).
In fact, for the most part, my crowd tends to be the Simple Living crowd, where we’d like to see people living with less and less, not more and more. So it would be antithetical to our position to want to see the poor being “equal” in terms of getting lots of cars and stuff and trappings of wealth like the rich have. God forbid!
No, we advocate for, for instance, programs to house and assist homeless veterans as a matter of justice and mercy, because they have served our country and don’t deserve to be cast aside as broken and weak because they’ve fallen into drug addictions or mental health problems.
Or we support programs to assist the mentally ill for reasons of mercy and for reasons of yet another value, fiscal responsibility (ie, it costs less to assist the mentally ill upfront and early in their problems rather than later in their psychoses or other problems).
I am entirely sure that there may be some out there who say: “We want the poor to have all the stuff the rich have. And we want the mentally ill to have all that too. It’s only fair!!” I’m sure someone exists out there like that. I just don’t know any and, as I have noted, I am around the folk who do this sort of work all the time.
I suspect that you have a mistaken notion of liberals on this point.