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Left Wing Conservative Values
Linked to groups: DFA Blog Network, Blog For America, blog for America Test and Poll Group, What are Progressive Values? Study Group, Reproductive Rights for America
What are conservative values? I’m having trouble answering this question because I fail to discern the way in which elements of a personal value system are political.
Instead, I would argue that a person’s particular political persuasion is not influenced by his or her set of values, but by what importance he or she places on one personal value principle over another. For example, a conservative voter with strong religious convictions may register more concern about a social issue like a woman’s individual right to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term than a progressive voter, based on the assumption that ending the pregnancy is the moral equivalent of murder.
This does not, by any means, imply that the right of the individual to make this decision is of less importance to a progressive voter. Nor does it necessarily imply that a progressive voter would opt to use, or support the use of, surgical methods to abort her pregnancy or the pregnancy of a loved one, or that he or she supports or endorses the use of this procedure by other women. What it signifies is that they regard the central issue in the debate not as the taking of human life but, rather, the unsanctioned intrusion of government into the personal, medical decisions of female citizens.
Does this analysis convert the value question from one regarding reproductive rights to the sanctity of life or of the individual’s right to freedom from unwarranted government control over personal matters? In my opinion, it does not, for the same reasons. That is, it is hardly a value exclusive to conservatives to preserve and protect the lives of the young, in the same way that it is not an exclusive value of progressives to preserve and protect the rights of individuals from government interference. Conservatives and liberals prioritize their mostly shared values in approaching and addressing issues of importance, particularly social issues.
I mention this to respond to the question of what so-called conservative values are. Upon my own reflection, I’ve reached the conclusion that I hold many conservative values dear. I’m not a proponent of or advocate for surgical abortion. I am a member of a traditional family consisting of a husband, wife and children, and fully recognize the instrumental value of the family structure for the purpose of successful child rearing and socialization. I am not religious, although I come from a religious upbringing, and held very strong religious beliefs in the past, subject, I should add, to some significant critical analysis on my part that has rendered me somewhat of a religious skeptic.
But I’m not a conservative. However my political views spring from my set of personal values, they don’t alter or influence them. Stated otherwise, it’s of no consequence to my political beliefs that I happen to uphold and abide by principles that political observers might regard as “conservative,” because I’m not a religious dogmatist. I form political views from the belief that politics affects people as a group living under the precepts of a Constitutional charter. It’s these precepts that must form the basis of core political beliefs. From a Constitutional perspective, therefore, preserving women’s reproductive rights is a higher priority than protecting the right to life of the unborn. I submit that the same analysis applies to many issues that are of concern to religious or “value” voters, you and I among them.
I think more then anything else, the frames of conservative and liberal have been limited by common political dialogue to very small definitions.
For example, pro-life is considered conservative yet what does pro-life actually mean? I consider myself pro-life because I support policies that help people live. However, most people would say that pro-life means a want to make abortion illegal. I am pro-choice and do not believe that's the answer or that by outlawing abortion we will actually create less death.
Instead, I consider myself pro-life because I am against the death penalty and most violent military actions. I support life saving stem cell research, unemployment insurance, reproductive education (education in general for that matter), universal health care, reasonable gun control, etc... the list is very long and "conservatives" are generally against all of it.
I think in this modern media driven age that the conservative and liberal titles have become almost meaningless.
The value of a human life trips up us all in the context of politics. Almost any person of any political orientation is willing to pay lip service to the sanctity of life. Yet it must be agreed as a fundamental principle that there is nothing in our attitudes toward unnatural death that finds it immoral, unethical, or intrinsically unacceptable.
Abortion is a minor example. Add to it the manner in which social mores and standards justify and approve of homicide in self defense, capital punnishment, military intervention, wars, political assassinations and even medical mercy killing. Extend the analysis further, and you can appreciate that in the case of the American nuclear attack on Japan, people could sanguinely rationalize taking the lives of thousands of innocent civilians for no more reason than to bring about an quicker conclusion to a war between nations.
- Being pro-choice is not about abortion or any medical treatment.
By Susan Rowe on Aug 20, 2008 6:35 PM EDTChoice is about a woman's right of privacy and equality under the law. Please don't buy into the right-wingers frame. Choice is a social justice issue. Any organization that is not pro-choice doesn't think women and men are equal.
Iron Jawed Angels
Similarly, as a nation, we've been able to stand by with relative eqanimity during the genocide that took place in Rwanda and is taking place in the Sudan. In truth, investing more value in human life than can be justified is a timeworn canard, dishonestly perpetuated by pro-life advocates whose commitment to human worth tends to wane over time once the hurdle of birth is successfully negotiated.
I completely agree. Only I wonder if we can really credit the whole nation with this failure, if most of the nation doesn't know what is happening. I think that if enough Americans knew they would want our government to take action.
Then again, since there really is no such thing as a civilian in a Democracy. All our hands get blood on them when our country takes violent action.
- Thanks for rescuing this Tom. George Lakoff, who is a member of BlogforAmerica, BTW
By puddle on Aug 20, 2008 6:23 PM EDT
By puddle on Aug 20, 2008 6:11 PM EDT
"The strict father is moral authority and master of the household, dominating mother and children and imposing needed discipline. Contemporary conservative politics turns these family values into political values: hierarchical authority, individual discipline, military might. The world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world."
"The nurturant parent model has two equal parents, whose role is to nurture their children and their children to nurture others. Nurturance has two dimensions: empathy and responsibility, for one's self and others. Responsibility requires strength and competence. The strong nurturing parent is protective and caring, builds trust and connection, promotes family happiness and fulfillment, fairness, freedom, openness, cooperation, community development. These are the values of strong progressive politics."
hope it gets back on the 'top hit' list!
Tom, I have a lot of material about values, conservative and progressive, on my website at: http://progressivespirit.com
take a look at this model of how values relate to other term and how it all fits together. This is a model of how I see it.
http://progressivespirit.com/Projects/ValuesModel/index.htm
One project on my To Do list is to write up a detailed definition(s) of the word values.. There are several definitions of what the word means. here are a list of people I asked to define: values and what they had to say.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=progressive+values+definition&search_type=&aq=f
There's a lot of confusion between the words, values, principles, issues, policies, morality, ideals, virtues. The words get used interchangeably and it makes a confusing mess. One thing I think your confusing is actions (ie. polices) with values. For example, I'day that 'restricting marriage to a man and woman' is not a value, but a policy. The values at stake might be equality (for progressives) and control (for conservatives).
here's a list of 500 values: http://www.humanityquest.com
How would you define the word 'Values'?
- If a person believes that marriage is a religious practice. It then is definded by them as a "value" for living a Godly life.
By Susan Rowe on Aug 21, 2008 9:30 AM EDTIn linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and even larger units of discourse (referred to as texts). The basic area of study is the meaning of signs, and the study of relations between different linguistic units: homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, paronyms, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, exocentricity / endocentricity, linguistic compounds. A key concern is how meaning attaches to larger chunks of text, possibly as a result of the composition from smaller units of meaning. Traditionally, semantics has included the study of connotative sense and denotative reference, truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles, discourse analysis, and the linkage of all of these to syntax. ...
from what I've seen, there's many definitions of the word 'values'. I'm trying to put together a list of the definitions.
if someone likes apples better than oranges, does that make apples a value?
With marriage, it could be divided into different underlying values, like the Lakoff model above,
conservative marriage - authority, hierarchy, discipline
progressive marriage - empathy, nurture, equality, responsibility,
for me values, always boil down to a one or two word essence. ie. authority, hierarchy, discipline, empathy, nurture, equality, responsibility, etc
- Legal marriage is contract that is mostly about property rights and obligations of duty. The contract has little to do with virtue of love.
By Susan Rowe on Aug 21, 2008 10:31 PM EDTChristian marriages came about during the middle ages.
Handfasting is a Neopagan ceremony of (temporary or permanent) betrothal or wedding.
Charity (virtue)
Courtly love saw a woman as an ennobling spiritual and moral force, a view that was in opposition to ecclesiastical sexual attitudes. Rather than being critical of romantic and sexual love as sinful, the poets praised it as the highest good. Marriage had been declared a sacrament of the Church, at the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, and within Christian marriage, the only purpose was procreation with any sex beyond that purpose seen as non-pious. The ideal state of a Christian was celibacy, even in marriage. By the beginning of the 13th century the ideas of courtly tradition were condemned by the church as being heretical.The church channeled many of these energies into the devotion of the Blessed Virgin Mary
"How would you define the word 'Values'?"
I don't have a definition peculiar to me. Derived from "value," a synonym for "worth," I think "values" describes the beliefs, principles or precepts we hold as important, such that following and applying them give life meaning and worth, on whatever level that's possible.
My post describes two shared in common by conservatives and liberals. Specifically, two relevant values commonly held by people of varying political persuasions are the sanctity of life, discussed more fully in my comments above, and the individual’s right to be free from unwarranted government control over personal matters.
Ironically, the fact that these values are shared by most people is illustrated by the debate surrounding Second Amendment rights, about which the respective political views of people appear to almost completely reverse from those presented when abortion is discussed.
A personal and cultural value is a relative ethic value, an assumption upon which implementation can be extrapolated. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based. Values are considered subjective and vary across people and cultures. Types of values include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological (political, religious) values, social values, and aesthetic values. It is debated whether some values are intrinsic.
Virtue (Latin virtus; Greek ἀρετή) is moral excellence of a person. A virtue is a trait valued as being good. The conceptual opposite of virtue is vice.
According to its etymology the word virtue (Latin virtus) signifies manliness or courage. Taken in its widest sense virtue refers to excellence, just as vice, its contrary, denotes the absence of such. In its strictest meaning, however, as used by moral philosophers and theologians, virtue is an operative habit essentially good, as distinguished from vice, an operative habit essentially evil. The four cardinal (hinge) virtues are Justice, Courage, Wisdom, and Moderation. These were enumerated by the Greek philosophers. The three supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope and (unselfish) Love are part of the tradition of Pauline Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Virtue can also be meant in another way. Virtue can either have normative or moral value; i.e. the virtue of a judge is to justly convict criminals, the virtue of an excellent judge is to specialise in justly convicting criminals (this is its normative value) vs. the virtues of reason, prudence, chastity, etc. (which have moral value).
Value theories investigate how people positively and negatively value things and concepts, the reasons they use in making their evaluations, and the scope of applications of legitimate evaluations across the social world. When put into practice, these views are meant to explain our views of the good.At the general level, there is a difference between moral and natural goods. Moral goods are those that have to do with the conduct of persons, usually leading to praise or blame. Natural goods, on the other hand, have to do with objects, not persons. For example, to say that "Mary is a morally good person" might involve a different sense of "good" than that in the sentence "A tummy tuck is good."
Ethics tend to be more interested in moral goods than natural goods, while economics tends to be more interested in the reverse. However, both moral and natural goods are equally interesting to goodness and value theory, which is more general in scope.
I'd say that 'sanctity of life' is not a value, but rather a conservative coined term. It's meant to gain the rhetorical high ground in discussions. I think progressives need to take all these conservative terms apart to understand what they are really referring to.
On it's surface it sounds like you care about life, but there's a lot more going on in the way they use it. (it's like the family values coined term)
In this term there is the value of 'sanctity' and a value of 'life'.
here's Michael Nagler talking about his progressive value of life.
Progressive Values: Michael Nagler - Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D5N3shnpsc
Sanctity - holiness of life and character, the quality or state of being holy or sacred.
Conservatives use 'sanctity of life' for abortion issue, yet seem to think nothing of starting wars that kill hundreds of thousands, and execute people, and let people live in poverty which kills them, and resist decent health care which kills thousands every year.
just some install thoughts
That you think a value is diminshed for being misused by an opposing political group. I suppose that using the same reasoning, conservative gun owners might feel they have the moral authority to argue that liberals only offer cheap lip service to the principle of an individual's right to be free of unwarranted government interference because they actually favor stricter gun controls. Would you agree with them?
How does a group with a political agenda manage to co-opt a personally-held value?
tom,
conservatives and progressives might both value empathy, but progressives seem to value it higher than conservatives.. Conservatives might value authority higher that empathy. so there's that aspect.
The other thing is you're mixing values and policies together. For example, having guns is not a value but a policy or action. The values behind owning a gun would be different for different people. Someone might be fearful of being attacked and have gun for the value of 'security'. Someone else might be a hunter and have a a gun for the underlying values of hunting. Which would be perhaps, 'challenge', 'adventure', 'entertainment', etc. So we need to break it all down a bit more to get to the real underlying values.
(I hate this 1000 character limit!)
Then there's the dishonesty factor with conservative values. Seems to me they use them as a smoke screen for other values. (that's what self-righteousness and hypocrisy is all about) The value of 'life' seems often like a smoke screen for the value of authoritarianism. I.e. the control of women by men. like Elaine says:
Failed Conservative Values: Elaine Charkowski - Patriarchy Family Values
I not only disagree with you, but I find the dialogue confusing because you change subjects with your explanation.
I'm not mixing values and policies together at all. I'm sorry that's not clear. Rather, I've examined two policy issues, abortion rights and gun control, and illustrated how liberals and conservatives tend to share exactly the same values with regard to each, but reverse the priority by which those priorities are applied, depending on the issue, in order to reach seemingly opposite conclusions.
It's not a complicated analysis. In the case of reproductive rights, conservatives make their pitch based on the application of a doctrinaire principle regarding the value of the life of the unborn. They turn their back on a libertarian antipathy towards unwarranted government intrusion in matters that are considered private. Liberals apply the same principles in precisely the opposite order of priority to reach an opposite result.
For gun control, the respective groups quite literally tend to switch sides in applying the same values. Protecting life is championed by liberals, who dismiss the problem posed by unwarranted regulation; Conservative chuck the precious quality of life argument, in favor of keeping government away from our personal liberties. The values didn't change. Which are given priority in the application is what changes.
sorry it took so long getting back to you on this. I'm swamped with editing, etc.
Did you look at this model yet?
http://progressivespirit.com/Projects/ValuesModel/index.htm
Does it make sense to you? It's the mental model I operate from.
and did you see this link that gives a framework of what conservative and progressive organizations claim to be their principles and values.
btw.. here's another article that just came out on progressive principles. Bernie Horn proposing some progressive principles.
What We Stand For—In Twelve Words
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008083424/what-we-stand-twelve-words
--
I agree conservatives and progressives can hold the same values, but they could hold them at difference levels of importance.
Don't interrupt it on my account, but two things: 1) we wholly agree that conservatives and liberals share many values and prioritize them differenently with respect to different issues. That basically sums up my argument; and 2) Your model is propogandistic.
It assigns beatific, uplifting values like "caring" and "change" to liberals only. Whether or not you agree politically with conservative thinkers, you cannot blithely assume that they are invariably uncaring or unreceptive to change. From a conservative's perspective, it's liberals who don't care about the life of the unborn, people whose jobs are affected by lax immigration policies, or people whose livelihood is threatened by environmental sensibilities.
Your model further describes emotions, traits, tendencies, attributes, or ideological beliefs like "fear" and "authoritarianism" as values when they're not.
1. I saw some film that was found of Nazis concentration camp guards and officers socializing and having a picnic out in the country. They were smiling and you could see the commradery and the community. You could see they were friends and cared about each other. They were taking time off from torture, murder, and other inhumanities, to share some quality time with each other. It was quite a striking old film to see. It looked like they were just regular folks. So they valued caring, community, friendship and commradery. And just like progressives and conservatives, we all have some values in common. And as you say, it is a matter of degree, but that matter of degree makes all the difference in the world.
2. the model is just in it's beginning stages and needs a lot of work. I agree it does have a positive versus negative quality and doesn't get into the nuances. But I think it still helps get some basic ideas across.
- the definition of values is broader and more inclusive
By Edwin Rutsch on Aug 26, 2008 2:27 PM EDThere's one definition of values. The ideals, customs, institutions, etc., of a society toward which the people of the group have an affective regard. These values may be positive, as cleanliness, freedom, or education, or negative, as cruelty, crime, or blasphemy.
Here's some other links related to topics we talked about. It just shows that in one definition of values, that there are many more values than people generally think. I it includes the fear and authoritarianism as values.
Human Values Project - they did a UN sponsored study on values. List's 4000 or so values.
http://www.uia.org/values/
Here is their list of values.
Union of International Associations Human Values Online
http://www.uia.be/sites/uia.be/db/db/x.php?dbcode=va&sbmt=1&go=b<r=a
Not to make conservatives sound like Nazis, but your example is excellent. Regardless of how they look on a picnic, being a German soldier under the Nazi regime doesn't necessarily suggest that you do not believe in the virtue of caring, community, and other values of the type you name.
You can also reasonably presume they value nationalism and ethnic purity. At this point, you may be identifying values that separate them from their Jewish captives. I would argue, however, that many Jews have ethnic pride and deep feelings towards the Promised Land. Thankfully they didn't go around killing Germans or some other people of a certain national or religious background because of it.
You've identified two points I'm trying to make, namely, that policies, i.e., beliefs from or actions based upon values, are distinguishable from core values (continued).
Also, that commonly shared values are not held or applied to the same extent, and in the same order of priority, by people who hold different policitial views. Fundamentally, that's why they hold those different views.
thanks for all the comments on this Tom.. I think it's important for progressives to work through all these ways of thinking about values so that we can Take Back the Values Debate from conservatives. I see values are talked about all the time now in the campaigns and it's good to work out what it all means. I'll be writing a lot of this up in a future post and article.
- The Father, Son and Holy Ghost exist and the Bible is true!
By David Reed on Aug 21, 2008 5:31 PM EDTBarack Working on Women's Issues
Showing his interest in women’s issues, Barack Obama held a town hall meeting with a few dozen women at a library in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Monday. The theme of the meeting was discrimination in the workplace and family strains on working women. Obama said when he hears about inequality in the workplace, it “makes his blood boil,” and he hopes his daughters won't have to face it. One only has to look at his plans to improve the lives of women in America to see how he is willing to fight for women's rights.
"From the first moment a woman dared to speak that hope - dared to believe that the American Dream was meant for her too - ordinary women have taken on extraordinary odds to give their daughters the chance for something else; for a life more equal, more free, and filled with more opportunity than they ever had. In so many ways we have succeeded, but in so many areas we have much work left to do.” ~ Barack Obama, Speech in Washington, DC, 11/10/05
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