The Bushies may be bringing the era of conservative morality to a close.

End Times
The Bushies may be accomplishing what liberals never could: bringing the era of conservative morality to a close.
By Michael Tomasky
Web Exclusive: 05.17.04

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7739

We aren't witnessing just the disastrous meltdown of Bush administration policy in Iraq. Nor are we witnessing merely the potential end of the line for one Cabinet official, although it does seem possible that, in the wake of Sy Hersh's devastating New Yorker take-out this week, George W. Bush will downgrade his assessment of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from "superb" to "expendable" (with the president now within the margin of error of approval ratings in high 30's, he desperately needs to roll a head that will make a statement).

Those developments, important as they are, don't really show us the big picture. The meta-story here is we are watching the total collapse of conservative morality.

Liberals and conservatives, as George Lakoff and others have observed, operate according to distinct moral systems. Lakoff's research has tended to emphasize the moral universes of individual liberals and conservatives -- liberals believe in questioning authority, conservatives believe in respecting authority, that sort of thing.

But the differences in the two moral systems also play out on the social or civic plane, and not just the individual level. And in that civic sphere, the differences come down to this. Liberals believe in public morality and in adherence to democratic process, while conservatives value personal morality and positive, efficiently achieved results. What has happened at Abu Ghraib -- and in Iraq generally -- are in fact direct expressions of conservative morality unchecked.

And it's clearer every week that conservative morality is a contradiction in terms, and that the American people are coming around to that view. I think this theory explains -- well, basically everything. For example: How many conversations have you had with a fellow liberal, discussing the latest administration effrontery, that concluded with one of you asking the other some version of, "How can it possibly be that this isn't considered a scandal?!"

people finally noticing. The collapse itself has been going on for a while now.

conservatives are completely amoral. Anything that advances the cause of fascism is "moral" to them.

Which he would.

Dubya can't afford to fire Rummy.

also is the fall of the GOP....

is concentration camps and gulags.

The other point about the Republican "individual" morality, is that it is often only veneer-deep, barely disguising rank sexual hypocrisy.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

...right-wing, conservative morality to take a hike. A long hike. A hike over the edge of the cliff.

It's like the classic bumper sticker says: "The Moral Majority is Neither."

Here, here.

seems less loved every day.

For once it may be true. Even unintentionally, like Gorbachev breaking up the Soviet Union, it seems to come back to Clinton throwing all their plans out the window. Bush trying hard NOT to be like Clinton at the same time trying not to be like his father who lost to Clinton has torn his unsubstantial mind in two and filled the void with drowning neocon rant and ideology taken to the absurd. Clinton's sexual impeachment crossed a big line that signifies the classic dislike the majority of America has for the hypocritical neo-Puritans.

By design but mainly not, Clinton has been the solid rock that phony ship has run against. He defines their defeat and laughingly their very obsession with him is the poison pill that might have killed all their plans.

head is Bush's and the people will proceed to roll that one.

Take a look at that 2000 county-by-county election map again. Any place where there are more cows than library books, you've got a majority of Republicans.

Even the fiendishly clever ones are bound to a religious dogma which pollutes rational thought and willingness to compromise.

So they're left with the poorly educated, the zealots, the hatists, and the greedy, all working at cross-purposes with one another now that they have completely consolidated political power in the country. Fiscal conservatives? I'll bet a lot of them have figured out that the best Republican President in modern history was Bill Clinton.

But I wouldn't count them out yet. Nothing motivates conservatives more than being told that they can't tell other people what to do.

that they are hoisted on their own petard!

This would be a silver-lining insight into a terrible situation, but for one element that instead renders it an exercise in wishful thinking: the power of cognitive dissonance.

What terrifies me most about the Abu Ghraib scandal is the persisting certainty that, just like everything else, it will eventually blow over with nothing worthwhile addressed. No one in a position of actual responsibility (theoretically) is going to get canned, impeached, jailed, or otherwise punished for abrogating their duty. "Personal morality" has lost its luster, for the moment ... but it became the view of sway for a number of reasons that will likewise motivate people to keep making excuses for it. In time (and probably not that much of it), Joe Sixpack will have convinced himself that what happened at A.G. was just not that bad. In the long run, things won't have changed at all.

Thanks for playing, and we won with seventeen percent of the exit poll and a Supreme Court reference? I don't have an AK, yet.