Miscast Morality

Conservatives have turned morals into a burlesque. They are obsessed with abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research—issues that divide and confuse. They don’t care enough about the morals we learned in kindergarten. Share. Wait your turn. Treat others as you want to be treated yourself.

Related Conservative Failures

Corporate Wilding

Family values are central to the conservative creed. But what weakens families more than a corporate raider hollowing out a factory for short-term financial gain, or stripping retirees of their pensions, or firing union activists struggling for better wages and working conditions? read more »

Rotting Regulatory Standards

Whenever conservatives slash a regulation or defend a governmental agency designed to protect the public, you can bet that greed is at the root. Conservatives call that "freedom"—but, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin said, "freedom for the wolf is death to the lamb." Too many lambs are suffering under conservative mis-rule—and isn't that the real moral failure? read more »

Abandoning Patients at Walter Reed

A crucial component of conservative moralism is an ostentatious devotion to military valor. Conservatives tend to forget to honor the soldiers once they return stateside from war, however—and the scandalous rot at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is only the most dramatic example. read more »

Foreclosing of America

Ask a conservative, and she'll tell you the family is the basic building block of society. It's hard to disagree—but how can you keep a family together if you're in danger of losing your home? Subprime mortgages were set up to feed Wall Street's voracious appetite for innovative financial instruments. The fallout from that misbegotten greed is now tearing families apart. read more»

More conservative failures

And conservatives entirely miss morality in the big picture. They don’t see the greed and materialism tearing us apart. They don’t see poverty and economic injustice, or refugees fleeing genocide. They don’t care for the green Earth that earlier generations set aside in protected national parks.

Conservatives have taken the morality out of moral values. They’ve put a political arsenal in its place.

Symptoms of Miscast Morality

Cronyism

In the universe of movement conservatism, it's immoral for people to marry someone of the same sex—but they're deafeningly silent about the immorality of a politician appointing an incompetent to a key government post just because both bonded in the same college fraternity. read more »

Corporate Welfare

Welfare supposedly destroys the moral fiber of the poor—anyone who's ever heard a Ronald Reagan speech knows that. Then how is it that massive subsidies to agribusiness to grow corn we don't need doesn't destroy the moral fiber of Archer-Daniels-Midland? read more »

Deregulation

In the 1990s, the phrase on every conservative's lips was "defining deviancy down"—liberals' supposed refusal to hold individuals to traditionally accepted standards of behavior. So why are they so silent about evaporating standards when it comes to corporate behavior? read more »