Moralized politics

In this morning's podcast with Layla, we touched on how moral matters are being politicized and political matters are moralized.

As you can hear in the podcast, I find this a very disturbing trend. During the podcast I didn't have the opportunity to discuss this at length but was going to do a post explaining why this is a disturbing trend.

Then this afternoon Larwyn sent this article by Tim Thorstenson, Why Did Global Warming Become a Moral Matter?

Now enter the moral angle. If global warming is now a moral matter, it would seem to suggest an associated implication that these inconvenient viewpoints are immoral. Apparently it is now the duty of "good" people to reject these opinions on this "moral" basis and without regard to whether they are factually true or false.

The most bizarre aspect of this strategy is that it is exactly what the liberals have always (unfairly) accused us conservatives of doing. Here, morality is not being used as a lens through which to view the facts, but rather as a hammer that can smash the inconvenient ones. Regardless of the evidence to the contrary, I must not believe it possible for Bob to have shot George because such a fact is not compatible with the accepted moral viewpoint! If I dare to believe otherwise, then I am "immoral".

The message of these pseudo-moralists is that "good" people must start by accepting the pre-ordained orthodox conclusion and then work backwards through the claimed facts, making not an intellectual assessment of whether they are indeed true, but rather a "moral" assessment of whether or not they agree with the conclusion. Things claimed as facts which are "good" (in this moral sense) should be embraced and those which are "bad" (in this same moral sense) should be discarded, not because they are factually false, but because they are "immoral".

In all honesty, this should scare the heck out of everyone. This is an atmosphere in which scientific inquiry is steered not by factual truth, but by a pre-ordained "moral" position. What is at work here is exactly what the liberals have always claimed to condemn. How is this any different from the decree of a radical theocratic dictator who will allow only those scientific conclusions which are approved by his church?

The liberals always claimed that such behavior - allowing moral considerations to trump factual ones - was the ultimate evil. But apparently, even this "ultimate evil" becomes "acceptable strategy" if the cause is justified. This is "liberal moral relativism" taken to a whole new level.

Read it all.