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Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist for the NYTimes, wrote a very good piece for today's paper, and if you have time, you should read it.
The piece does a good job NOT of attacking someone for having an extra-marital affair, which is a fairly common occurrence and usually a private matter, but of exposing the hypocrisy of those who use moral claims ostentatiously for political ends and do not practice what they preach.
That is to say, there is often a huge difference between rhetoric and behavior.
There are Democratic sex scandals to be sure, but Democrats didn’t build a franchise on holier-than-thou moral rectitude. The Republicans did. They used sexual morality as a weapon and now it’s shooting them in the foot.
Sanford's hypocrisy is bad enough.
Sanford voted to impeach Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky saga. According to The Post and Courier of Charleston, Sanford called Clinton’s behavior “reprehensible” and said, “I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally” to resign. “I come from the business side. ... If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone.” Remember that Mr. Sanford?
Yet so far, he says he has no plans to resign. I actually do not think having an affair is any necessary cause for someone to resign, if he is still capable of doing his job, ... BUT, does his failure to resign, in light of his own words, not render his previous rhetoric hypocritical?
Aside from that, one of the factual highlights of Blow's article is this graphic, which is indicative of the fact that the hypocrisy is NOT limited to the politicians, but is located among the voters themselves:
Graphic URL: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/06/27/opinion/20090627blowchart.html .
The statistics and the article show that
- And "subscriptions to online pornography sites were 'more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality' and in states where 'more people agree that ‘I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage.’ ' "
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I am reminded of this article:
Talbot's article fairly accurately describes the situations of places such as the small East Texas town where I grew up. Fundamentalist evangelical Christians often oppose sex education, condoms, and birth control, and they preach against premarital sex as if it is something wrong and horrible that offends and angers what-they-think-of-as-a-righteuos-personal-God, BUT often their children still have sex before marriage anyway and are more likely to do so without protection. When their children do get pregnant, they are more likely to feel pressure to get married young and have the baby, and they are more likely to end up divorced, because the marriages they enter are not well-chosen.
I grew up in a crowd of evangelicals. We all naively thought premarital sex was a great sin, trusting NOT in authentic communication from a real God, trusting NOT in nature or biology or logic, but trusting in tradition and the Bible and much pretense of communication with "God" out of youthful credulity and lack of education. I honestly think that most of my fellow students had premarital sex anyway. Those who did not, because they wanted so desperately "to please God," were at least in some cases over-eager to get married at a young age, and I know that there were plenty of divorces in the lives of youth-group members as they grew up.
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I am also reminded of this short TED presentation:
"Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most."
Haidt identifies five fundamental moral values shared to a greater or lesser degree by different societies and individuals:
- Care/Harm for others, protecting them from harm.
- Fairness, Justice, treating others equally.
- In-group Loyalty to your group, family, nation.
- Respect/Authority -- Respect for tradition and legitimate authority.
- Purity, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions.
Haidt's Conclusion: Americans who call themselves liberals tend to value Care and Fairness higher than In-group Loyalty, Respect-for-Authority, and Purity. Americans claiming to be conservative put relatively less emphasis on Care and Fairness, and they put more emphasis on Ingroup Loyalty, Respect for Authority, and Purity. BOTH groups give Care the highest over-all weighting, but conservatives value Fairness the lowest, whereas liberals value Purity the lowest. Regardless of whether you are Republican, Democrat, Independent, or whatever, this talk does an interesting job in explaining the similarities and differences in the general morality of Democrats and republicans. Both groups have strong senses of morality, but they have different focuses.
Does it make sense to you? What do you think about it?
More on morality: Steven Pinker, “The Moral Instinct.” January 13, 2008. NYTimes. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html "The Evolution and Relativity of Judeo-Christian Morality," an outline of mine, - http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/EvolutionOfJudeoChristianMorality.htm“Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior,” by Nicholas Wade, NYTimes, March 20, 2007, re: Dr. Frans de Waal, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html More on Sanford and "moral" scandals: "A Nation of Candidates," by Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, NYTimes June 20, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/opinion/20collins.html "Sanford Case a New Dose of Bad News for Republicans," By Jim Rutenberg, NYTimes, June 25, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/us/25repubs.html
"Mysteries Remain After Governor Admits an Affair," By Robbie Brown and Shaila Dewan, June 25, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/us/25sanford.html “Genius in the Bottle,” by Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist, NYTimes, Published: June 27, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28dowd.html
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