Republican Morality

What is Republican morality? Such a provocative question! Before we get to an answer, though, what is morality? Jonathan Haidt has much to say about this in this 2008 Edge article. I have often mentioned Haidt in my posts.  I find him to be a first rate thinker and writer.   Now, back to the topic of morality. Here's how Haidt defines morality:

Morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible. It turns out that human societies have found several radically different approaches to suppressing selfishness.
The first thing he teaches, then, is that "morality" is not an "it." Rather, it is a set of (potentially conflicting) approaches that all aim for the same end: "making social life possible." Haidt sets forth the sort of society that passes as "moral" for many of us:
First, imagine society as a social contract invented for our mutual benefit. All individuals are equal, and all should be left as free as possible to move, develop talents, and form relationships as they please. The patron saint of a contractual society is John Stuart Mill, who wrote (in On Liberty) that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." Mill's vision appeals to many liberals and libertarians; a Millian society at its best would be a peaceful, open, and creative place where diverse individuals respect each other's rights and band together voluntarily (as in Obama's calls for "unity") to help those in need or to change the laws for the common good. Psychologists have done extensive research on the moral mechanisms that are presupposed in a Millian society, and there are two that appear to be partly innate. First, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to suffering and harm, particularly violent harm, and so nearly all cultures have norms or laws to protect individuals and to encourage care for the most vulnerable. Second, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to issues of fairness and reciprocity, which often expand into notions of rights and justice. Philosophical efforts to justify liberal democracies and egalitarian social contracts invariably rely heavily on intuitions about fairness and reciprocity.
I'll call this Society #1.  Now consider a different social arrangement, Society #2: [More . . .]

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George Carlin’s brutally patriotic criticism

The First Amendment isn’t worth a damn unless it is actually being used. If it is not being used, then politicians and their rich and powerful keepers will continue to utter long and loud streams of nonsense to financially screw the ordinary working people of America in dozens of ways. They will continue to feed us unending misinformation in order to justify their urges to wage unnecessary wars to help them retain their power. They will continue invading our houses and and minds thanks to their many stenographers in the commercial media. Those of us who have resisted drinking much of this country’s spiked elixir of Judeo-Christian-consumerist-warmongering-bigotry know that most of what we hear our authority figures uttering, even those authority figures who we want to believe to be on our side, is flawed. Much of it substantially untrue and quite a bit of it is absolute bullshit.  I hate to be writing these words, but I've lost a lot of faith in the United States in the past ten years.  Misinformation pours into the living rooms and cars of Americans every day, where it too often takes root, perhaps because it is uttered by people wearing fancy suits and flag pins. Americans need an antidote to this unending poison. They need the kinds of people who can effectively challenge these messages and messengers--someone who not only can challenge this propaganda but can do it with sharp fast pinpricks that deflate this bloviation on the spot.  They need much more than "news" reporters who don't have the tools, courage or motivation to challenge all the BS. They need someone who is old enough and thick-skinned enough that he/she doesn’t give a shit about being criticized for being unpatriotic. In fact, this type of person, of whom we actually need many, feeds on the criticism aimed at them by the powers-that-be and even gets even better under attack; he/she feels compelled to speak truth to power because it is the right thing to do, it's in the blood and it's the patriotic thing. The types of patriotic people we need to deliver this blitzkrieg criticism also need to be excellent entertainers in order to maintain the attention of large numbers of Americans. As comedians, they can hone their messages into comical memes that their audience members will pass around in viral fashion long after the original message was delivered. To the extent that these funny social critics portray themselves as jesters, they will have more access to the mass media, enabling them more effectively put their verbal swords in and out of those who own and run this country. Many conservatives consider this iconoclastic feedback to be unpatriotic. [More . . . ]

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Matt Taibbi challenges the notion of “rogue traders”

Swiss bank UBS recently announced that a "rogue trader" caused the bank to lose $2 billion. At Common Dreams, Matt Taibbi argues that what this "rogue trader" was doing was par for the course on Wall Street, even since the intentional destruction of the Glass-Steagall Act. Therefore, allegations that "rogue traders" cause losses at Wall Street banks is yet another fraud on behalf of these "banks."

Investment bankers do not see it as their jobs to tend to the dreary business of making sure Ma and Pa Main Street get their $8.03 in savings account interest every month. Nothing about traditional commercial banking – historically, the dullest of businesses, taking customer deposits and making conservative investments with them in search of a percentage point of profit here and there – turns them on. . . . Nonetheless, thanks to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed in 1998 with the help of Bob Rubin, Larry Summers, Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm and a host of other short-sighted politicians, we now have a situation where trillions in federally-insured commercial bank deposits have been wedded at the end of a shotgun to exactly such career investment bankers from places like Salomon Brothers (now part of Citi), Merrill Lynch (Bank of America), Bear Stearns (Chase), and so on. These marriages have been a disaster. The influx of i-banking types into the once-boring worlds of commercial bank accounts, home mortgages, and consumer credit has helped turn every part of the financial universe into a casino. That’s why I can’t stand the term "rogue trader," which is always tossed out there when some investment-banker asshole loses a billion dollars betting with someone else’s money. They’re not "rogue" for the simple reason that making insanely irresponsible decisions with other peoples’ money is exactly the job description of a lot of people on Wall Street. Hell, they don’t call these guys "rogue traders" when they make a billion dollars gambling.
Reckless Wall Street "banks" are mostly not-banks. They only make about 15% of their money raising capital for businesses. Instead, they are gamblers who are using what's left of their bank function as a human shield so that when their reckless bets go bad they can call out to Congress for yet another mega-wad of cash to save them from going under. You can almost hear them shouting, "Save the banks! Save the banks!" If the federal government hadn't killed Glass-Steagall, Congress would be much better situated to respond to what would have been only a reckless gambler, "Sorry, but it's time you suffered the natural consequences of your actions . . . no federal money for you." If only Glass-Steagall were still in place, those stodgy and boring bank accounts of people like you and me would be safely segregated from the uncontrolled avarice of huge gambling corporations that currently call themselves "banks."

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So-called debates

Just look at what passes for a "debate" to "help" Americans choose their next president. Bob Cesca is aghast:

[T]hat's exactly what CNN put on the other night. A game show. The cable news media has gone from simply cracking gaming and sports metaphors to actually becoming a game, with politicians as the contestants and a rotating guest panel of snickering propagandists and "analysts" as the judges. The only difference is that contestants on traditional game shows are held accountable when they answer incorrectly -- they're penalized monetarily or eliminated from the game altogether. But our cable news game show hosts just move on to the next question, so, in this regard, Wink Martindale might be a tougher moderator than Wolf Blitzer. I'm not sure if CNN knows it, but nearly everyone across the political spectrum thought the CNN presentation of the debate was ridiculously self-satirical

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