Is Moral Language Illiberal? Posted by Marc Grinberg

Looking back on my last post, I don't think I was fair to Shadi's comments on language.   Whether or not liberals will fight to take back the liberal internationalist tradition from the neocons (which I suspect Shadi would agree with me that they should), another fundamental question arises: Is morally-influenced foreign policy language/messaging inherently illiberal?  More specifically, is it illiberal to talk about right and wrong or about morally inspired goals and purposes in language that explicitly rules out moral relativism?

I would argue that it is not.  That liberal uncomfortableness with moral language is a consequence of the Bush Administration's style of rhetoric and the failures of its morally influenced foreign policy. When Bill Clinton used moral language (strikingly similar to that used by Bush) and when Jimmy Carter rooted his human rights emphasis in morality (even religion - he did say that human freedom is a "fundamental spiritual requirements"), liberals, not conservatives, rose in applause.  But now that the Bush Administration has taken ownership of morality, liberals are running from it, fearful of sounding too much like a neocon. 

So where do we go from here?  Maybe the Bush Administration has tainted moral language so much that liberals need a decade or so of value-less foreign policy debate before they will be comfortable again with the language of morality.   Maybe liberals just need to take it down a notch - a "values lite" language, if you will.  Maybe I'm entirely wrong and moral language is illiberal.  Readers, what do you think?

Comments

[Don Bacon]

The constant obsession of DA pundits seems to be with language rather than deeds, form over substance. The fact is that non-Americans don't believe what the US government says any more than we do, no matter how "liberal" it may be. The US is judged on its ill-treament of its own citizens and its economic and military imperialism abroad--people aren't stupid or ill-informed--they know all about us. To paraphrase, actions talk and BS walks. Michael Signer may talk about Exemplarism and his City on a Hill but when he says that invading Iraq was a good idea he's saying that his City includes 650,000 dead people and that's jake with him. This won't sell in Peoria any more, and it definitely won't sell in Qatar, Alexandria or Jakarta.

[J Thomas]

The problem is not use of moral language. The problem is use of moral language by people who are morally stupid. Unfortunately this includes at least 40% of the population. Judging by the last election, at least 49% of the population.

The fundamental moral argument these people understand goes like this:

A: Those people over there are doing something morally bad. All good people must agree that they are morally bad.

B: We are going to go after them. When we're done they'll never be able to do those bad things ever again.

C: We are moral people who would never ever do anything wrong. But if we do get accused of doing something wrong while we whomp on bad mean people, remember that they're bad mean people who deserve whatever they get.

I believe this moral argument is too simple. But you don't go to war with the moral argument you wish you had, you go to war with the moral argument you've got.

I have no objection at all to liberals making moral arguments. But I want them to make workable moral arguments and not this travesty. On the other hand, if the time comes that liberals are running the government and they have to lie to the public so the public will do the right thing, and without those lies the public will do the wrong thing, then what can you do but shrug? I suppose it's only to be expected that they will publicly use the stupid moral argument that people want, to get the country into wars that the public wouldn't tolerate otherwise. If there's a difference between this and what the neocons do, it will be that the liberals perhaps will be lying us into good useful truly-morally-justified wars that we will win easily.

[tksharp]

2 points:

First, I think there is (and should be) a divide between political language and "strategic" language (for lack of a better term). What I mean is that when leaders talk about foreign policy in public, their discourse should focus more on high-fallutin ideas, morality, and rhetorical flourishes. Behind closed doors, where decisions are actually made, strategic discourse and the national interest should be the norm. Can you imagine Bush publicly discussing military intervention in order to secure oil? But, realistically, oil is a vital geostrategic resource and thus is a valid part of foreign policy discussions.

That sounds like I'm giving leaders permission to not be forthcoming when speaking in public and I guess I am. My main contention is that moral language is more appropriate as rhetoric in public than behind closed doors as a strategic justification.

Second, in terms of "is moral language acceptable?" for liberals the answer is yes - think Rawls or MLK Jr. Moral rationales are acceptable forms of public reason but they should be fortified by other, non-moral explanations. An atheist can't necessarily understand religious arguments, but that doesn't mean religious points are invalid. The key is to supply a host of justifications that a wide swath of people can comprehend. Again, MLK Jr. was the master at this.

[J Thomas]

tksharp, you don't mind if I call you Nick, do you?

OK, old Nick, you are a devil in a Santa Claus suit.

[Dan Kervick]

But now that the Bush Administration has taken ownership of morality, liberals are running from it, fearful of sounding too much like a neocon.

This is self-indulgent rot. There are plenty of people, generally regarded as liberals, who argue against the kind of foreign policy you and the Truman Project people support, and do so from a moral point of view. They may not all share the same moral perspective, but they usually have some moral perspective.

It might comfort you to think you and your gang of interventionists are a sad bunch of moral heroes, forced into honorable retreat by by a wave of cynical amoralism. By divesting your opponents' views of moral content, you are able to avoid grappling with moral criticisms of your own views. Nice and easy. But you're not the only defenders of moral values on the block.

I know there are a certain number of genuine moral skeptics and amoralists out there on the liberal side. But I think I speak for an even larger group who don't say you and your cohort are wrong because you're moral, but who say instead that you are morally in the wrong.

[Zathras]

Are you looking for "moral language for liberals" that all liberals will agree on? If so, you may be looking for a long time.

This is partly because there are some on the American left who adhere to a very old tradition in this country that deplores the use of American power overseas. It is partly because an equally venerable but somewhat less widely recognized tradition is honored by some on the left (as well as the right): resident in a rich country with few historic grievances and no territorial ambitions, some Americans lack a context for thinking about foreign affairs and their own country's interests, and are tempted into passionate advocacy of Other People's Causes. It is, for example, an easy matter to find Americans who have never visited the Middle East and speak not one word either of Hebrew or of Arabic willing to adopt as their own the grievances and arguments of that region's people and make moral arguments for who ought to govern what parts of the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Lastly, one must always be aware of the propensity of Americans to project domestic political controversies into the field of foreign affairs. This is more common among liberals than among conservatives for some reason (possibly dating back to the late Vietnam period, when liberals found it convenient to forget that two successive Democratic administrations had saddled the country with an unpopular war, and blamed the whole thing on the already unpopular Republican administration that succeeded them).

When liberals declaim against the horrible things "we" have done overseas they generally do not mean anything they or the Democratic politicians they support have done, nor is "our" hypocrisy ever their hypocrisy. Guilt for America's supposed crimes always attaches somehow to people who would be liberals' opponents in domestic politics whether foreign affairs were a salient issue or not. Genuine ideological leftists, who inherited from the Soviet Union a reflexive dislike for the United States and all its works regardless of the issue or specific circumstances are another story, but a large quantity of liberal rhetoric about America's deficient morality overseas is simply a variant of liberal rhetoric about domestic politics.

There is a political trap here for liberals, one they fell into repeatedly during the Cold War's later years and that some are flirting with now over Iraq and other foreign problems. During the Cold War some were tempted to assign moral equivalence to both the United States and the Soviet Union of the gulags, for example, and to think of the North Vietnamese and their allies principally as victims of American aggression. This tended to undermine liberals' claim on the trust of the American public, which was generally well able to interpret the evidence of Communism's malignant evil that surfaced so regularly during that period and tended with good reason to regard people who claimed that America was as bad or worse as unreliable. Similarly today one can easily find liberals willing to put the traditional (and very sensible) liberal horror of nuclear proliferation on the back burner to argue that North Korea and Iran are only acting reasonably when they seek nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American aggression -- though both countries began their pursuit of the bomb many years ago. It is equally easy to find liberals willing to argue that Iraqis are only slaughtering Iraqis now because of the wicked Americans.

In the long run Americans, however persuaded they are that a given policy of their government is unwise or even wrong from a moral point of view, will balk at suggestions that the most vicious, depraved actors in world politics are no worse than their own government. This will frustrate some liberals, without question (the suggestion that the difference between America and its enemies overseas lies less in the virtue of our culture or politics than it does in the abject moral depravity of theirs will provide little comfort either). But Americans are aware that their country, however imprudently or carelessly it has sometimes fought, has generally chosen its enemies well; to the degree it has succeeded and its enemies have failed the world has been better off, and vice versa. That is true even in Iraq, which may be the least well-conceived war this country has ever fought. The many nations so often hectored by American diplomats over the years for human rights abuses, corruption and so forth have generally earned the privileged of being hectored, as well.

The record leaves liberals with abundant room to damn current adminstration policies, propose new ones, and defend their position with the most flowery moralistic rhetoric you can think of, if that is their choice. They are well advised to limit the scope of that rhetoric to America's own moral traditions, binding on us only, rather than appealing to allegedly universal moral values binding on everybody, that anybody can see our enemies do not honor.

[Don Bacon]

Zathras presents a fine example of how (purposeful?) historical inaccuracies and sloppy thinking often results in the US doing one thing and then presenting it as something entirely else, resulting in low US credibility in the world.
*There are people of all political persuasions, not just leftists, who deplore the use of American power overseas. Actually it is more of a conservative position while interventionism is usually seen as liberal (Wilsonian).
*One does not have to visit the Middle East to have an opinion on who should inhabit the Middle East. To suggest that one must speak the local language and visit the area in question is preposterous.
*The liberals who fought against our Vietnam aggression never forgot that Democrats had gotten us into that war. Where is the evidence that they didn't blame Democrats? Bobby Kennedy didn't spar with Lyndon Johnson?
*How did you come up with "America's supposed crimes?" If you don't think that killing a couple of million Vietnamese, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, and thousands of Central Americans were wrong than you are self-delusional.

Claim the high ground if it makes you feel good but non-Americans aren't so stupid that they will believe it. Again, deeds trump words. And get your facts right.

[J Thomas]

One does not have to visit the Middle East to have an opinion on who should inhabit the Middle East. To suggest that one must speak the local language and visit the area in question is preposterous.

Yes, but we have a vocal minority that have visited the region and that do somewhat speak one of the local languages -- hebrew -- and that have very strong opinions. Phrasing it this way implies that opposition to that group's proposed policies for the USA is wrong.

The liberals who fought against our Vietnam aggression never forgot that Democrats had gotten us into that war. Where is the evidence that they didn't blame Democrats?

After Nixon campaigned on a platform of ending the war and then went 4 solid years doing pretty much what Johnson or Goldwater would have done, it made sense to blame Republicans instead. Similarly, if Hillary (or whoever) wins in 2008 on a platform of finding some workable solution for iraq, and 2012 comes and it's all the same only worse, I'll be ready to blame democrats at that point.The important thing then won't be Bush's folly but Hillary's.

How did you come up with "America's supposed crimes?" If you don't think that killing a couple of million Vietnamese, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, and thousands of Central Americans were wrong than you are self-delusional.

It's the same old logic. Once the other guy does something morally awful then it doesn't matter what we do to him, it's all good once he's bad.

[Zathras]

I thank Don Bacon for his response, and remind him that I did say genuine leftists were different.

To J. Thomas I'd point out two things. First, the implications behind the idea that who governs the West Bank is not of great importance to the United States are not as obvious as he seems to think.

Second, the short list of immediate consequences of America's withdrawal from Vietnam included in rapid succession massive violations of the peace treaty Washington and Hanoi had just signed, invasion of South Vietnam and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of its people, the obliteration of two neighboring governments by North Vietnam's allies and the extermination of somewhere from a quarter to a third of Cambodia's population. Now, one can certainly argue that this was not anywhere near as bad as what America did in Indochina, or alternately that it was only because of the Americans that this all happened -- people have, in fact, made both arguments at the same time. In the same way one can argue that only because of America did the Iraqi insurgency detonate those car bombs in a market yesterday and kill over 200 people.

I'm not trying to tell anyone what they should believe. My point upthread was merely to point out the kind of political trap liberals have fallen into before, and may again. Blame America first if you think you have truth on your side; good luck getting Americans to believe you.

[J Thomas]

OK, Zathras, why don't you tell us why the west bank is important out of all proportion to its size?

http://www.geoplace.com/hottopics/CIAwfb/factbook/rankorder/2147rank.html

Why is it so much more important than rwanda which is 5 times the size? #177 versus #155. The solomon islands at #151. Togo, #133, is almost 10 times as big. Eritrea, #105, more than 10 times as big.

I contend that the only reason we pay attention to the west bank is israel. The west bank is nothing to us apart from israel. And what makes israel important? There's our trillion-dollar investment in israeli infrastructure, our secret nuclear aid that gave them nukes (or was that stolen from us?), our ideological support for zionism (which does nothing whatsoever for us and gives us a whole lot of enemies).

If we did not unconditionally support israel, how would the west bank be an issue to us more than trinidad or tonga or cyprus?

My point upthread was merely to point out the kind of political trap liberals have fallen into before, and may again. Blame America first if you think you have truth on your side; good luck getting Americans to believe you.

By that reasoning, all we need is for the GOP to get the troops out of iraq, and then tell the US public whatever the public wants to hear, and they'll win. And since winning is what matters, you and I should be republicans.

If telling the public what they want to hear is the goal, why are we even discussing the issues we've been discussing? What we should be looking at is how to tell the public that we're doing the right thing to pull out of iraq. The public wants us out of there, and they want to hear we haven't been defeated, that we're doing the right thing, and that what we do will achieve all our goals.

Obviously it would be much easier to come up with a way to tell the public that we've won and we can go home now, than to actually win. So by your reasoning that's what the GOP ought to do, and "liberals" "progressives" "interventionists" and democrats can fight the uphill battle of arguing that we haven't won.

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