How conservatives lost their moral compass
*snip*
American history can be read as a series of episodes in which we reached what could be called a tipping point of shame when our behavior became so egregious that we, as a people, decided to desist from our worst excesses, whether it was slavery or antipathy to immigrants.
Take civil rights. The majority of Americans, even outside the South, might originally have had little real enthusiasm for the civil rights movement. Most urged patience. It was only after the public saw the beatings during the Freedom Rides, the firehoses and police dogs at Selma and the church bombing in Birmingham that Americans were shamed into accepting the claims of African-Americans to equal justice under the law. Shame was the moralizing force.
Shame also defeated the hatred of Father Charles Coughlin, the famous radio priest who laid the Great Depression at the feet of Jewish international bankers, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who recklessly accused his critics of communist treachery. Both had reached that tipping point at which ordinary Americans felt these provocateurs had gone too far. Americans felt shamed.
There is a reason we have never previously had a hatemonger like Rush Limbaugh enjoy popularity for as long as he has. The reason was shame. You couldnt find enough people, let alone a broadcaster, who wanted to be identified with that sort of viciousness. The initial enthusiasm for it eventually waned.
But that was then. Surely when a group can publicly cheer a mans death for not having health insurance, the sense of shame is gone. It faded not only because liberals had subverted it by casting it as a conservative scheme to corset society, but because conservatives managed to delegitimize it. They attacked it as yet another elitist scheme, contrived to neuter strong conservatism.
Conservatives portray shame as a way of making people feel bad about the lesser angels of their nature. Which is exactly what shame should be.
Their bigger trick, though, has not been to delegitimize shame so much as to convert shamelessness into a valid political position. It can be attacked only at the peril of seeming to take sides in our political wars which the mainstream media steadfastly refuse to do.
*snip*
*snip*
American history can be read as a series of episodes in which we reached what could be called a tipping point of shame when our behavior became so egregious that we, as a people, decided to desist from our worst excesses, whether it was slavery or antipathy to immigrants.
Take civil rights. The majority of Americans, even outside the South, might originally have had little real enthusiasm for the civil rights movement. Most urged patience. It was only after the public saw the beatings during the Freedom Rides, the firehoses and police dogs at Selma and the church bombing in Birmingham that Americans were shamed into accepting the claims of African-Americans to equal justice under the law. Shame was the moralizing force.
Shame also defeated the hatred of Father Charles Coughlin, the famous radio priest who laid the Great Depression at the feet of Jewish international bankers, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who recklessly accused his critics of communist treachery. Both had reached that tipping point at which ordinary Americans felt these provocateurs had gone too far. Americans felt shamed.
There is a reason we have never previously had a hatemonger like Rush Limbaugh enjoy popularity for as long as he has. The reason was shame. You couldnt find enough people, let alone a broadcaster, who wanted to be identified with that sort of viciousness. The initial enthusiasm for it eventually waned.
But that was then. Surely when a group can publicly cheer a mans death for not having health insurance, the sense of shame is gone. It faded not only because liberals had subverted it by casting it as a conservative scheme to corset society, but because conservatives managed to delegitimize it. They attacked it as yet another elitist scheme, contrived to neuter strong conservatism.
Conservatives portray shame as a way of making people feel bad about the lesser angels of their nature. Which is exactly what shame should be.
Their bigger trick, though, has not been to delegitimize shame so much as to convert shamelessness into a valid political position. It can be attacked only at the peril of seeming to take sides in our political wars which the mainstream media steadfastly refuse to do.
*snip*
