A consistent theme in arguments between the left and right is who has the authority to do something. Biden’s latest vaccine mandate is an example.
The Daily Wire is suing the federal government over the mandate. They argue …
… the federal government has no power under the Constitution to force half the U.S. private sector workforce to be vaccinated against their will or to endure repeated medical testing as a condition of earning a living.
It also argues that even if the federal government did have this power, Congress never delegated the power to OSHA, meaning this type of rule would be in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, making it unconstitutional.
This is the way a conservative would think. It’s not only a question of whether something is a good policy, it’s also a question of who should do it, and under what authority.
Liberals tend to push that stuff aside. If it’s a good thing to do, they don’t care about all those details. (Back when I participated in that dumpster fire called Facebook, I saw this play out again and again.)
I’ve mentioned Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s work on moral foundations before. They include …
- Care/harm
- Fairness/cheating
- Loyalty/betrayal
- Authority/subversion
- Sanctity/degradation
- Liberty/oppression
Dr. Haidt says conservatives tend to give equal weight to all these factors, while liberals tend to emphasize #s 1, 2 and 6, and don’t pay much attention to the others.
We see this pattern in the debates over the vaccine mandates. Liberals don’t seem to care whether OSHA in particular, or the federal government in general, actually have the authority to issue these mandates. They just think it’s the right thing to do, so get on with it, and damn the details. But to conservatives, how something is done is just as important as what’s done.
Note: I’m not saying that liberals never appeal to authority, or rely on it. Of course they do, especially in legal arguments. It’s just that authority is not as important to them. It’s the annoying stuff you have to get past.
I would say that for a certain kind of person, authority is either the annoying thing you have to get past, or the convenient tool to use to get your way, depending on which works better in the situation. I don’t think whether someone has that mentality or not falls neatly along conservative/liberal lines, though I have a hunch about where it’s more prevalent.
Haidt describes it as “This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.”
I see that more as the attitude that finds nobility in the idea of submission to a legit authority. A knight bowing to a king, etc.
What you’re describing is the cynical use of authority, which I’m sure everybody does from time to time, although it seems likely that people who don’t see any nobility in authority would be more likely to take the cynical path.
In the USA one doesn’t bow down to a king or queen. When you’ve lost an election, conceding is as deferential to legitimate authority as it gets.
I didn’t have cynical in mind as much as un-self-reflectively hypocritical, the kind of person who on Tuesday might honestly believe they’re on the side of the angels in insisting that others bow down to the authority because they like what the authority is saying about a particular issue, and on Wednesday, on a different issue, ask why it matters that an authority limits what can be done in a situation when the righteous move is just to do what needs to be done? But both are things found in human nature.
Okay. Your comment makes me wonder how closely hypocrisy is linked to a lack of self-reflection vs. how closely it’s linked to a lack of concern about an issue.
For example, the person you describe is un-self-reflective, but why? Are they un-self-reflective as a general rule (a lot of people are) or are they un-self-reflective in a particular area? Those two are not mutually exclusive, of course.
It’s easy to picture the pious slave owner who examines his conscience every night and never sees owning slaves as one of this sins. Is it just as easy to picture someone who tends to downplay loyalty, authority and sanctity as someone who simply overlooks hypocrisy in those areas because they don’t really matter?