At The American, AEI resident scholar Andrew
Biggs highlights an interesting study that confirms what
most conservatives probably already know to be true of
themselves: We understand why our liberal friends think what
they think more than they understand why we think what we
think.
[University of Virginia professor Jonathan] Haidt’s
research asks individuals to answer questionnaires
regarding their core moral beliefs—what sorts of values
they consider sacred, which they would compromise on, and
how much it would take to get them to make those
compromises. By themselves, these exercises are
interesting. (Try them online and
see where you come out.)
But Haidt’s research went one step further, asking
self-indentified conservatives to answer those
questionnaires as if they were liberals and for liberals
to do the opposite. What Haidt found is that conservatives
understand liberals’ moral values better than liberals
understand where conservatives are coming from. Worse yet,
liberals don’t know what they don’t know; they don’t
understand how limited their knowledge of conservative
values is. If anyone is close-minded here it’s not
conservatives.
Haidt has one theory to explain his results, while Biggs
has another. Haidt says conservatives speak a broader and
more encompassing language of six moral values, while
liberals focus on a narrow subset of those values. Biggs
says conservatives understand liberal positions because
they’re inundated with them — by the media, by academia,
even to a certain extent by the culture.
Haidt and Biggs both have a point. It takes just about a
year of actively debating politics or witnessing the debate
of politics to realize that (a) the two parties to the
debate don’t speak the same language and (b) the liberal
party will have few opportunities to learn the
conservative’s language. It’s not only that we don’t use the
same words, it’s that we also assign completely different
meanings to the same words.
The president’s prattling about the Buffett Rule is a
perfect example. He repeatedly uses the word “fair” when he
discusses this rule that would require anyone who earns more
than $1 million a year to pay at least 30 percent in taxes.
The Buffett Rule is actually officially named “The Paying a
Fair Share Act.”
Conservatives have been quick to cede the word “fair” to
the president. Instead of debating whether The Buffett Rule
actually is fair, we’ve focused on the idea that
economic growth and entitlement reform are the keys to
deficit reduction. We know that our definition of “fair” is
different than liberals’ definition of “fair,” so we’re
never going to be able to convince liberals that the Buffett
Rule actually is unfair. In a world dominated by
liberal influences in the media, academy and culture, we
have no choice but focus on the fact that The Buffett Rule
would do very little to reduce the deficit.
If liberals understood the conservative definition of
“fair,” they might better understand how it’s possible
to oppose the Buffett Rule. As the debate stands at this
moment, it’s conceivable that the average liberal thinks
conservatives actually oppose a rule we think is fair just
because we don’t think it will adequately reduce the
deficit. But why would anybody oppose a fair rule? In fact,
we oppose the Buffett Rule because, by our definition, it is
unfair — not to mention that it does very little to reduce
the deficit. (As an aside, I’ve been searching for an
article in which a conservative argues explicitly that the
Buffett Rule is unfair and am finding it surprisingly hard
to find. Has anybody read a good one?)
The word “just” is defined as “based on right.” Our concept
of what is fair starts with our concept of what is a
right. Whereas progressives think that rights are
given by the government, conservatives think that “we are
endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.”
Among our God-given rights is the right to keep the fruits
of our labor. So far, I have never heard a good argument
that we have a right or a claim to the fruits of others’
labor unless they have promised them to us for some reason.
We certainly never have an intrinsic a priori
claim on the fruits of someone else’s labor.
As long as he is allowed to keep what he has earned, the
conservative thinks he has been treated fairly — even if
others have more than he has. The liberal has a completely
different definition of fairness. Liberals seem to think we
have a right to the same fruits no matter what our labor.
It is true that different kinds and quantities of work
yield different kinds and quantities of fruits. That is
sometimes hard to take — but if, in the end, we receive the
fruits we agreed to when we selected our labor, then the
fruits we receive are fair. (For example, if we agree to a
particular day’s wages and we receive that day’s wages, then
we have been treated fairly. Nobody changed the deal to
which we agreed.) In making the choice to be a secretary and
not a hedge fund manager, for example, the secretary forgoes
some of the fruits of the hedge fund manager — but obtains
some fruits the hedge fund manager never tastes, say the
fruit of more time to spend with family or the fruit of less
stress. If we are not content with the fruits of our labor,
perhaps we ought first to consider changing our labor,
rather than demand we be given different fruits.
One last thought: Conservatives clearly have a more
expansive view of what constitutes “fruits.” We do not
measure success and fairness solely by money. In the example
above, I recognize the worth of time off and less pressure —
two intangibles. For all that liberals like to talk about
conservative greed, it’s interesting that conservatives can
content themselves with less money in exchange for other
benefits whereas liberals seem blind to those benefits and
just want the money.
