We’re all ‘values’ voters

May 18, 2006

[tag]George Will[/tag] has noticed that reporters have found a new shorthand to describe socially conservative religious voters who want the federal government to play an active role in legislating morality: “[tag]values voters[/tag].” Oddly enough, Will is sick of it. For a change, I think he’s right.

An aggressively annoying new phrase in America’s political lexicon is “values voters.” It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.

This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots. […]

The phrase “values voters,” which has become ubiquitous, subtracts from social comity by suggesting that one group has cornered the market on moral seriousness…. And by ratifying the [tag]social conservatives[/tag]’ monopoly of the label “values voters,” the media are furthering the fiction that these voters are somehow more [tag]morally awake[/tag] than others.

That’s…absolutely right. If you ask me why I’m a Democrat, I’ll tell you about my values. If you ask Dick [tag]Cheney[/tag] why he’s a [tag]Republican[/tag], he’ll talk about his values too, though they probably wouldn’t overlap much with mine. But the idea that James Dobson’s followers are somehow the voting constituency that cares more about morality and earnestness than anyone else is absurd.

It’s largely a semantics debate, but political labels are too often unhelpful and loaded in rhetorically misleading ways. Will is right to point this out, no matter how odd it is for me to agree with him.

In fact, I’d be remiss if I failed to note that Will has, on occasion, been entirely readable the last couple of years. Last fall, Will was unusually candid in questioning Bush’s competence. Earlier this year, Will took on some of the GOP rhetoric on tax exemptions and misplaced moralizing. Not long after, Will gave a rather scathing assessment of the president’s energy policy. And when it comes to the war in Iraq, Will has described it as “untenable,” compared it to Vietnam, and said the war could “unmake” Bush’s presidency.

Leave it to George W. [tag]Bush[/tag] to make George Will look to reasonable.

One of my little embarrassments as a liberal is that George Will is my favorite political columnist. Not favorite conservative columnist; favorite columnist.

Intellectual honesty and willingness to break the party line is admirable in someone who, you know, isn’t on the party payroll. (The entirety of Fox News’ staff would be wise to remember that.)

I like him even better than any liberals for two reasons. First, because someone whom I vehemently disagree with but always find myself agreeing with on first reading is a welcome intellectual challenge. Most conservative writers let me roll my eyes and disagree because they’re idiots. George Will pushes me, and I tend to be drawn to smart people who disagree with me more than to smart people who agree.

Second, because I just like the way he writes. Turns of phrase like “aggressively annoying” make me smile.

  • Slowly but surely, America unites itself against Bush.

    Okay, the ITMFA just seems annoying, and is starting to make my comments sound like spam to me, so I’m going to refrain, but continue to use it in other formats with sanctioned signatures.

    Signatures, CB, give us signatures! And permanent user accounts so we can search for our old comments! I beg of you!

  • I’m interested to know your opinions on the Hayden confirmation quote where Hayden says he “can’t say” whether contractors are subject to the Geneva Conventions. Check out my blog, exclusively devoted to contractors and related issues, to comment…

  • Will is a great one for sticking his finger in the wind and attacking conservatives when there is already blood in the water. Where was Will on the “values” issue when Dean was saying basically the same thing in 2003-04?

  • I believe they love to frame these matters as a “Us vs.Them” thing. Gotta stir up the “us” after all!

  • It’s the same thing applies to the “family values” or “pro-family” labels– it’s totally meaningless. The VAST majority of people think family, or at least their family, is something to value. At issue is how family is defined and who gets to define it– you or the government.

    As for “values voters,” having values doesn’t mean anything inherently good, people value bad, maladaptive things all the time. I’m a liberal, Jewish lesbian feminist– which means I have values coming out the wazoo! The issue is about what we value and whether or not we want to enforce our own values via “daddy state” laws.

    Of course the implication for all of these labels– the reason that they are coined in the first place– is that if you’re not “pro-family” in the way they define it you’re “anti-family” and if you aren’t a “values voter” they way right-wingers define it you have no values.

  • But the idea that James Dobson’s followers are somehow the voting constituency that cares more about morality and earnestness than anyone else is absurd.”

    Absurd, to be sure, but the word I had in mind was “elitist”, a moniker that the right likes to tag the left with.

  • “Where was Will on the “values” issue when Dean was saying basically the same thing in 2003-04?”

    My question is where will Will be on the “values” issue in 2008 when George Allen is the Republican candidate? My guess is that all of these repentant conservatives haven’t really learned their lesson and will be voting for the next pseudo-Southern frat boy to get the Republican coronation.

  • “contractmonitor”, good luck on your new blog. Much
    consciousness raising is needed on the subject. Private contractors are the routine solution when the government desires a buffer against accountability and legal compliance. They can suck out profits while delivering crap, and yet the politicians keep talking up the cost-savings.
    I think it’s great you didn’t limit yourself to just defense contractors (the entry about privately operated prisons).

  • When I describe a moral person, I mean someone who doesn’t steal, cheat, or kill, and who treats his or her neighbors with compassion and respect. When the religious right talks about morality, they’re talking about sex — specifically, the sex that other people should never, ever have.

  • Way of topic, but I think it’s worth a heads-up:

    BellSouth faxed the letter to the attention of Craig Moon, the newspaper’s president and publisher, and its general counsel, said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher. The letter calls for the paper to retract the “false and unsubstantiated statements the paper made regarding BellSouth.”

  • Nice of George to notice what some of us have been saying since 2004 when Shrub’s return to office was explained using the ‘values voters’ meme. Where’s he been for the last 18 months?

  • In fact, I’d be remiss if I failed to note that Will has, on occasion, been entirely readable the last couple of years.

    george will used to make sense *most* of the time. ever since reagan and will’s buddy nancy came to town, he’s been mostly a fathead. (i did enjoy his reference to new divorce laws that ‘did much to increase freedom and happiness.’ didn’t he dump one wife? i realize that’s under the republican limit, as yet not established, but still.)

    your pal,
    blake

  • “Will is a great one for sticking his finger in the wind and attacking conservatives when there is already blood in the water.” – dander

    Actually, I think Will is great at explaining what conservatism is to pseudo-conservatives. Watching him trying to explain libertarian small government fiscal conservative humble foreign policy free trade conservatism to all the Theocratic Reactionaries, Imperial Presidency, and Know-Nothings ‘his’ party has saddled themselves with following the banner of a frat-boy whose only use for New Orleans is the strip joints and bourbon is quite enjoyable.

    Will is only an ass when he tries to explain to liberals how they must think. He deludes himself into thinking that liberalism is somehow nothing more than a mirror image of himself, and thus when he talks about it, he appears a fool.

  • Just to add a bit of fairness and balance here, let me cite a passage from George Will supporting drilling in ANWR. I would hope that CB would agree that this is a classic instance in which Will has not been “entirely readable” (when he agrees with my views).

    I value wilderness. We are all derived from wildness. Wildness is our legacy and the hope for the future of earth. It is not something to be sacrificed in the name of preventing scarcities for the sake of preserving our modern, unsustainable lives for whatever end. So, read here what George Will thinks of my values:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121401933.html

    “But for many opponents of drilling in the refuge, the debate is only secondarily about energy and the environment. Rather, it is a disguised debate about elemental political matters.

    For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society’s politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.

    The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society’s balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism — of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America — is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals’ lives. This is done in the name of equality.

    People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.

    Therefore, one of the collectivists’ tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern — the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

    A quarter of a century of this tactic applied to ANWR is about 24 years too many. If geologists were to decide that there were only three thimbles of oil beneath area 1002, there would still be something to be said for going down to get them, just to prove that this nation cannot be forever paralyzed by people wielding environmentalism as a cover for collectivism.”

  • “The primary goal of collectivism — of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America — is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals’ lives.” – George Will

    See, he’s being an Ass again, trying to tell liberals how to think.

  • There was a comment a year or so concerning politics in Europe and how Europeans, also, are ‘values voters’ – it was just that their ‘values’ consisted of little things like health care for all.

  • “Values shoppers” want to get their monies worth when puchcasing a product. Do “values voters” want to get their monies worth when purchasing a politician? Just asking.

  • “Do “values voters” want to get their monies worth when purchasing a politician?” – rege

    They may want it.

    They never get it.

    Look at all the things Reagan promised his ‘values voters’. Prayer in school. Elimination of the Education Department. End of Abortion.

    He did nothing for them, but they keep going back to the same place (Republicanites) expecting a different result. Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

  • Every once in a while, say once every month or so I basically agree with Mr. Will. I believe it’s temporary sanity or insanity, but I can’t pin down whether it’s him or me.

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