The Myth of the Progressive Ideal of Tolerance and Moral Neutrality

Hi all! The following is a guest post from a good friend of mine, Alex. I hope you enjoy his thoughts! Here is a brief introduction:

My name is Alex Woollends, I attend Texas Tech University. I am Catholic first, everything else, second. I like philosophy, and I am especially interested in the philosophy and theology of the Catholic Church.

The Myth of the Progressive Ideal of Tolerance and Moral Neutrality

            The suspension of Phil Robertson from "The Duck Commander" for his comments on gay marriage has caused controversy.  Robertson expressed his view that gay marriage is morally wrong, in accordance with traditional Christian morality.  On the right side of the political spectrum, Conservative Christians see this as an affront to freedom of speech, and on the left side of the spectrum, Progressives see this as another welcome victory of the cultural war that has been raging in America since at least the mid 1960's.  As a Catholic, it goes without saying that I support the common traditional morality that Robertson espoused - however clumsily he might have done it.  Despite this, it is frustrating to see so many Christians make simple statements such as "I support Phil Robertson" or "Stand for Freedom of Speech: Support Phil Robertson" on Facebook and other social media sites without any intellectual justification for their position.  No one who is "on the fence", so to speak, will be persuaded by these assertions, because they are only assertions.  It does not mean that there is no value in stating what you believe on moral issues, especially if your statements are correct.  But the folks on the fence already know the position of the Religious Right and Christians in general.  Making this statement again isn't going change their minds.  And for the Progressives, these statements are likely going to be met with snickering and eye rolling from what they view as a reactionary moral viewpoint and a dying religion.

            A common theme found from Progressives is something that is commonly heard throughout social media sites such as Facebook; We Need to be Morally Tolerant, or We Should Be Neutral: Be Open Minded, or still another, Don't Force Your Morality on People.  All of these viewpoints can be reconciled with the idea that we should accept a doctrine of Moral Neutrality.  Moral Neutrality, as I am defining it here, is the statement "We should suspend moral judgment on actions in order to be tolerant."  Moral Neutrality is justified by a Progressive conception of "tolerance."  The idea is that in order to be tolerant, we need to be morally neutral.  The Progressive idea of Tolerance and Moral Neutrality is central to current American culture, having been accepted implicitly (and sometimes even explicitly) by Christians and certainly accepted by the Progressive Left, which uses this doctrine as a club or hammer to attempt to nullify moral discussion when it suits them.  In today's America, a moral claim is often refuted by a Progressive with a simple "you are not being open minded" or ”you need to be more tolerant of other people's (beliefs or actions)."  Everyone has encountered a situation like this in contemporary America, and only those who have thought and read about the issue philosophically or have some background in studying ethics realize how absurd this dogma is.

            The argument that comes from Progressives roughly goes like this:

1.      We need to be tolerant of other people's beliefs and/or actions.

2.      Moral Neutrality is the means of achieving the end of tolerance.

3.      Therefore, we should be morally neutral. (From (2) and (1)).

            In this essay, I will show why not only Moral Neutrality contradicts itself, but also that Progressives misunderstand and misinterpret the meaning of tolerance.  I draw my insights not only from ethics literature, but especially from Catholic Philosopher J. Budziszewski in his book, The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man and the chapter "The Illusion of Moral Neutrality."  Indeed, this essay is basically a summary of a small part of this chapter, but with an added question and answer objection section at the end.  As a concise work of only 145 pages, it is difficult to summarize the text without providing extensive quotes and references.  I have done my best to get to the heart of the matter and argument that Budziszewski makes, but I strongly recommend a thorough reading of not only the essay "The Illusion of Moral Neutrality", but the entire book from which the essay comes from, The Revenge of Conscience.  I have not even touched on Budziszewski's fantastic handling of religious tolerance, which is another facet of this brilliant work.

            The Argument

            As Budziszewski notes in his book Revenge of Conscience, it is amazing that people who insist on being morally neutral are so quick to attack those who are not morally neutral (Budziszewski, 40).  For it is not morally neutral to accuse someone of doing something wrong; to say that he ought to be morally neutral is to make an ethical claim.  The reason why Moral Neutrality is untenable is because it falls apart as soon as someone asks the question, "Why be morally neutral?"  The answer to this question necessarily cannot be morally neutral.  To say, "I ought (or should) do X" means that you are making an ethical claim that it is good to do X.  But ethical claims about what one should do or not do are necessarily not morally neutral - they assert the rightness or wrongness of something.  Upon justifying the rightness of being morally neutral (be it social justice, egalitarianism, feminism, etc) the person making the claim violates the moral neutrality dogma that they assert so strongly.  The problem with moral neutrality isn't that it is unachievable, like trying to eradicate all murder and injustice - it is that it is "inconceivable, like a square circle" (40).

            As Budziszewski observes, people who see the absurdity of moral neutrality are afraid to abandon it for fear of becoming intolerant, or reverting to bigotry (41).  But what is tolerance?  To tolerate something is put it up with it despite our urge to not have to deal with it.   We should tolerate X because the harm done in suppressing it is far greater than the harm in tolerating it (such as a bad or misguided opinion).  But our common understanding of why we should tolerate something leaves us with a way out of the mess of skepticism on moral beliefs.  Skepticism to moral beliefs permeates our culture; it is the view that no one can be absolutely right about all things, or, since people are often fallible about moral conclusions, we shouldn't accept someone's moral views of the rightness or wrongness about something - hence, we should be skeptical about all things moral.

            This strikes me as odd, because we are left again with something that is making a moral claim: saying that you shouldn't believe in what a Christian philosopher (or theologian) says because people are often incorrect about their moral viewpoints is, in fact, a moral viewpoint, and a rigid and unskeptical one at that.  The minute a so-called moral skeptic thinks that it is okay to fire or suspend someone from a show, enact a law to uphold politically correct speech, or enact quotas that force people to pay money for healthcare that funds abortions, contraception, and things that many people find morally objectionable, he is no longer taking the view of a skeptic.  He is making a moral claim about the rightness of something, and through his support of legislation, he is supporting the use of force against someone.  And plainly, even the moral skeptic believes that some things should be tolerated, and some should not.  Rape shouldn't be tolerated, for example, while having a bad opinion on some things (or inappropriate thoughts) should be.  We know that the former shouldn't be tolerated, while the later should, because of consequences.  While trying to avert the evil of rape, we are trying to protect the goods of the woman; her dignity, her personal autonomy that is violated, and to a lesser extent, the relations between the sexes, which would devolve into fear rather than mutual respect.  We tolerate bad views because "... the act of suppression itself may be evil, or give rise to evils" (43).  We tolerate bad views because while the views may lack truth, we also value peace.  In this way, we are caught in a balancing act between weighing "goods" versus "bads".  This is not necessarily a consequentialist viewpoint on ethics - because were aren't presupposing that the only reason why we tolerate things is because of consequences, or that the only way we know what is right or wrong is because of the consequences that something brings about. 

            Budziszewski goes on to make a simple thought experiment; he imagines three types of moral skeptics.  One moral skeptic says, "I do not know the truth of anything right or wrong, and cannot know of the truth of anything right or wrong."  This man has nothing to say in the inquiry about what we should tolerate.  We can call him the "absolute skeptic."  The second man is a moral skeptic, but (like I believe most who are reading this) is unsure about whether many things are right or wrong, or how we should weigh moral goods versus moral bads.  He might say something like "I don't always know exactly and in what circumstances what is good or bad.  But I think that truth is out there, and we can find some of it if we search and engage in discourse." This man could be called the "partial skeptic."  The third person, whom I think very few of us can sympathize with is the man who might say, "I know all of what is right and what is wrong.  I know exactly how to weigh moral goods versus moral bads."  Even though this third man might think that he knows perfectly everything that is right or wrong about the world, he might still be curious as to why something is right or wrong, or at least, eager to explain why he feels that he knows everything.  We can see, as Budziszewski notes, that only the partial skeptic and the non-skeptic have something to say about whether or not something should be tolerated (42).  The absolute skeptic has literally nothing to say; unless he has some moral presumptions, then he cannot claim that we should tolerate X, because this claim is a moral claim itself.  If the absolute skeptic does not believe that anyone can know with surety the truth of the good or bad, the right or the wrong, of any moral issue, then he has no place in asserting the validity of why we should tolerate X, for this itself is a moral claim that depends upon the truthfulness of ethical assumptions. Thus, unless we are an absolute moral skeptic, we can engage in discourse to try to find the truth of matter of what we should tolerate.

            Most of us believe that we know that some things are right and some things are wrong.  Of course, most of us also do not believe that we know everything that is right or wrong.  Most of us lie in the middle, the "partial skeptic", as Budziszewski describes him.  But so long as we have some idea or inclination as to what is right or wrong, we lie either with the "partial skeptic or the non-skeptic, and it is these two viewpoints that make moral reasoning possible.  The absolute skeptic has nothing to say in arguments concerning morality, for he does not believe that any amount of reasoning can help us find what is right or what is wrong (43).

            We can now see that true tolerance does not, and cannot be the claim that we should tolerate everything, because tolerance is about guarding goods and/or averting evils.  Tolerance requires morality, not the absence of it, as the absolute skeptic and much of our modern culture says.  Without the good or the bad, the very idea of tolerance is bogus - for there is nothing to tolerate.

            Budziszewski makes three claims of tolerance that are worth thinking deeply on, especially for the more philosophically minded people who will read this essay:

1.      Tolerance cannot be neutral about what is good, for its very purpose is to guard goods and avert evils.

2.      Tolerance is not a moral rule, a moral attitude, a moral feeling, or a moral capacity, but a moral virtue.  Further, although tolerance is not one of the moral virtues that Aristotle discussed, it is a moral virtue of the Aristotelian type.  For it is a mean between two opposed vice, one of them characterized by excess and the other deficiency, its location to be discovered in the case-by-case exercise of practical wisdom.

3.      The circumstantial element in the practice of tolerance is right judgment in the protection of greater ends against lesser ends.  This is no different from any exercise of practical wisdom, except insofar as its constant element, right judgment in the protection of ends against mistaken means, makes it special (46).

            Because we cannot be morally neutral as a means to the end of tolerance, this undermines premise (1) in the Progressive argument for moral neutrality, and therefore negates the conclusion.

Some common objections

            I have some common objections that you might hear, and the responses that might be given.  I have found this to be more helpful to the layman than the regular "academic" answers to objections.

            I think that this argument is wrong.  I consider myself very tolerant, and I believe in moral neutrality.

            It is difficult to answer this one, other than to gently point out that the person is being irrational.  To believe in moral neutrality means that you do not believe in making moral judgments because you feel that this is a means to the end of tolerance.  But in order to decide what we should tolerate, we need to make moral judgments and use moral reasoning, which moral neutrality says we cannot do if we are to remain morally neutral.

            I believe in tolerating a lot of things.  Isn't this all just about opinions, anyway?

            This would be about opinions if legislation was not being enacted to coerce people through laws (that is, the force of the State) to do certain things, and to be punished for not doing them.  And we cannot justify the use of force against a human being if what we are discussing here is all "just opinions."  To do so would make the use of force arbitrary, and no different than if I decided that it would be okay to hit people who wear pink hats with baseball bats.

            I accept that being morally neutral about something is impossible unless we don't have any morals at all.  But you still haven't said why you agree with Robertson's views on gay marriage.

            This will be for another time.  I will draw on teleology, Catholic moral teaching, and the meta-ethical theory of intuitionism in order to make my argument.  The argument isn't very complicated, and can be easily understood by most.  What I wanted to do was shed some light on why the Religious Right and Christians in general need to rebuke the idea of moral neutrality.  Instead of implicitly or explicitly accepting moral neutrality as the correct means to the end of tolerance, they need to debunk the entire idea.  Progressives and those who support moral neutrality know in their hearts that they cannot be morally neutral - if they did, they would have to say absurd things such as "I don't think it's wrong torture people for fun."  The real reason why they embrace the language of moral neutrality is that it gives them the ability to dictate what we should be morally neutral about.

            But aren't there some things that we should be morally neutral about?  Wouldn't we be getting into moral absolutism about everything if we abandoned Moral Neutrality?

            I think that you are confusing the idea of Moral Neutrality with things that are morally permissible.  We say that walking across the street, in normal circumstances, is morally permissible.  We don't say that we are justified in walking across the street because it is morally neutral, because by saying that something is justified, or should be done, or shouldn't be done, we are using moral language, and therefore making a moral claim.  You cannot make a moral claim in an attempt to justify a doctrine that says that you cannot make moral claims.  This is a contradiction.

            Okay.  I think I see where you are coming from.  But I'm a little worried still; how do we know what to tolerate, and what we should not tolerate?  Shouldn't we be worried about the implications of this argument, even if it is true?

            We shouldn't be worried about the implications of this argument because we already live in a world where moral neutrality is not taken seriously.  No one who murders, lies, steals, abuses, and otherwise harms humanity makes claims in court of believing in "moral neutrality" in hopes of getting off the hook.  This is part of the scandal that Moral Neutrality brings; we clearly do not believe in it, but we pretend that we do.  Progressives have won much of our culture by equating Moral Neutrality as the proper means of achieving Tolerance.  By doing this, they are able to say who is being tolerant and who is being intolerant, which our culture then interprets as who is being right and who is being wrong, respectively. 

            It isn't always easy to see what things are good and what things are bad.  But we won't be able to make a clear path to get to the truth of matters if we don't clear up our thinking, and continue to believe in obtuse political ideology.  Professional philosophers would be embarrassed by the arguments that our culture makes.

            I am a moral Subjectivist.  I believe that morality is subjective.  Because of this, I don't agree with you - I think that people should be free to do what pleases them, and that moral neutrality is the best way to get there.  Your talk about tolerance might sound correct, but I don't think that we should be so eager to throw away Moral Neutrality because morals are subjective.

            This is a bad argument.  It confuses the definition of what is subjective and what is objective.  For something to be subjective, we say that part of what it means to be this thing is constituted in the psychological response and attitude that it elicits from someone.  Sexiness, for example, is subjective; what two people find sexy is almost always never the exact same thing, and certainly never exactly to the same degree, if that can even be measured.

            For something to be objective, however, we say that part of what it means to be this thing is not constituted in the psychological response or attitude that it elicits from observers.  In other words, this feature of the object we are considering, call it 'F', is independent of the psychological responses and attitudes of the observers.  A circle has no edges, and this does not depend on who is perceiving the circle.  If someone "saw" or thought of a circle that had edges, it would not be a circle that he was thinking of or perceiving.

            For someone such as this hypothetical person to make this moral statement apply to me, he must think that his argument applies to me despite what I personally feel about it.  This can only happen if ethics is objective.  If he is right, and ethics is subjective, then we can simply reply, "So what?"  to his objection.  For the person can have no claim on what I should do any more than I can have a claim on what he should do; we are both just acting our subjective moral preferences.  If I like red, and you like yellow, I cannot then say, "You should like red - it is objectively better than yellow," because we both know that the enjoyment of color is subjective.  When we speak of morals, however, common sense flies out the window - and we make objective statements ("You should not say that", or "I think that is wrong: you shouldn't do that") while saying that we are subjectivists. 

            Now is not the time to deal the deathblow to the deeply stupid theory of meta-ethics that subjectivism proposes.  This will come in a later essay.

            I don't think that you should force your morality on people.

            I haven't tried to put this in the proper context, because I'm not sure why people say this.  (While I have been hard the average Christian for not having intellectual arguments to back up his views, and his reliance on platitudes, nothing compares to the deeply silly stupidity of Progressive sayings.)  Unless you don't believe in right or wrong, you have a personal morality.  Whether or not this morality is legitimate is another question.  This means that you believe in using the use of force against someone for something that you consider to be immoral.  Therefore, you are for using force on people because of "your" morality.  The only way around this is pacificism - but it is rare that the person making this statement is in fact a pacifist.

            I think that the real thrust of this saying is that the person who is being chastised is considered to have an arbitrary moral system.  According to the accuser, morals are like enjoying candy and tasting sweets; everyone has a different flavor.  We "should not impose our morality on people" implies that "our" morality is just that - ours, and no one else's.  This, of course, is absurd.  The minute the accuser says, "you should not impose your morality on me", he is making a moral statement.  The proper reply is, "my morality isn't just my morality.  It is everyone's, including yours.  I don't believe that morals are subjective, and neither do you; if you did, you wouldn't bother to argue with me about this."

            I didn't come to argue with you.  I agree with everything that you say.  I am, however, a Christian, and I'm scared to take a stand on these issues; I need more information.  But even with that, I'm worried.  It isn't easy to be true to the faith - I'm worried about what my boss will think of me, what my friends will think of me, and how society will look at me.  I guess I'm just afraid.

            This is something that I understand, and I feel especially compelled to speak to.  As Christians, we are all worried about the current state of our culture.  As Budziszewski notes, we have entered an "\eerie stage in history" where vice is lauded, virtue is condemned, and morality is seen as something subjective - while those who say this are quick to objectively condemn anyone who doesn't agree with the New Way (136).  America today is a land of almost unfettered narcissism, where the Self is acknowledged as the One True God and Religion.  Ironically, anyone who attempts to speak about the actual God that many have believed from time immemorial to be the Creator of the Universe will quickly find themselves lambasted for being such fools.  These people have found their god - and it is themselves.

            So what can we do?  The first thing is not to be quiet.  This doesn't mean that you have to protest, start a campaign, or yell at people who make the above obtuse arguments.  It just means that you have to find a way to express the concerns and worry that you have in a gentle and compassionate way.  We are not brutes - we are Christians.  This means that we have to come to the world with the face of Christ.  The current Pope, Pope Francis, is perhaps the best exemplar of our times in this; he does speak about the dogma's of the Catholic Church, or the "hard issues" that the Church has stood by for two millennia.  But he has been keen to remind us that we are to be humble, and kind - while we do know basic right and wrong, and can reason our way out of things like the silliness of Moral Neutrality, it doesn't mean that we are always right about everything.  Be humble, and it will be easier to say what you want to say - and if you can practice saying it gently, then people might actually listen to you. 

            It is okay to become angry at times - even God becomes angry.  And there are things that will likely come to pass where anger is justified.  Christians are not pacifists.  We have not, however, reached that point yet, and so dialogue with the rest of the world should begin in earnest, and with as much charisma and kindness as we can.  This has largely been the mission of Pope Francis since the beginning of his papacy.

            But before we can take our argument to the masses, and do so with compassion, we are required to have an argument.  Merely stating platitudes or using internet meme's isn't going to change anyone's mind.  Contemporary Christianity has rightly been criticized for being a touchy feely, pop-culture climate that is shaped by people who largely don't have anything intellectual to say.  Be educated.  Read books.  If your faith means so much to you, as it should, you should at least know something about it.  Reading just the Bible is not enough.  If you don't care to read or hear anything about the intellectual giants of Christianity, then you don't care much about either your religion, or the issues that you portend to take a serious stance against.

            Start with Budziszewski's The Revenge of Conscience, and then go to Alasdair MacIntyre's classic, After Virtue.  For a powerful defense of the objectivity of ethics, read Ethical Intuitionism by Michael Huemer.  I argue from a Catholic perspective, and so the authors that I have listed are Catholic philosophers (minus Huemer).  There are quite a few more, but this should be enough to get you started.

            Start small, and take courage in other Christians when you are afraid or get down.  A simple pat on the back cheers most up - for me, it requires a bit more.  Like a massage.  And a draft of some good microbrew from the local pub.  And feet warmers.  With a good movie.  And popcorn.  And... well.  You get the idea.

"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."

- Chinese Proverb

           

Works Cited 

Budziszewski, Jay. The revenge of conscience: Politics and the fall of man. Spence Publishing Company, 1999.