The Conservative Moral Stance On Controversial Statues
A response to a charge of conservative hypocrisy
Mr. Stein is a proud man of the Left and self-styled slayer of conservative pieties. Unfortunately, his influential columns excoriating conservatives for one thing or another have so far (like most such columns on Medium) gone mostly unanswered.
In attempt to remedy this unfortunate situation I will be here responding to one of his most recent “gotcha” pieces entitled “Conservatives Say They Hate Moral Relativism. Why Do They Use It To Defend Statues?” (with the obligatory witty subtitle “Relativism for me but not for thee”). Let us begin surveying the damage.
He kicks off by stating that the main inconsistency is that “the same conservatives who decry moral relativism as a depraved form of ethical thinking are often the first to embrace relativism in defending historical figures and institutions they like.”
This is the main thrust of his piece which he attempts to defend primarily (but not solely) by intentionally refusing to differentiate between the concepts of moral relativism and moral culpability. More on that later but first a quick refresher on the conservative position (as put forth by a friendly and not a critic like Stein).
Conservatives hold to eternal and unchanging moral values but recognize the specific contexts in which each individual leads out their moral lives when passing moral judgement and assigning moral culpability.
Slavery (to take an evil that is rightly considered beyond the pale) was for the majority of human history a bedrock institution of most human societies. Rare was it the ancient society in which master and slave were unknown. As a result of that slavery was accepted as part and parcel of the human social condition.
The ancient Roman jurists rightly considered it contrary to the law of nature but given its ubiquity and economic necessity was considered legally lawful. It was classified as one of those unfortunate things inherent to human societies like crime and inequality. A cultivated man of near impeccable morals who was born and raised in that sort of society would look upon the enslavement of humans with a melancholy but resigned view.
The average man of a slave society in his turn looked upon slaves as wretched creatures to be exploited or pitied and as a living breathing examples of how degraded his own position could become if he were say to be captured in battle or completely bankrupted.
The average modern Western man lives out his moral life in a quite different moral context. He lives in a Liberal and free society where enslavement is seen not as an unfortunate fixture of the human condition but as a disgusting anomaly. Living under a regime of liberty that progressed to the point of giving full rights even to women there is nothing more instinctually alien and repulsive than buying and selling human beings like cattle.
Would Mr. Stein disagree with the statement that the man in a Liberal and free society who wished to own slaves would be much more morally depraved than a man in a slave society who wished to do the same? I assume not.
A version of this moral apologia is put forth by the Left constantly when they argue that a violent criminal that rose from a wretched background should not be held as morally culpable as a violent criminal that came from a highly privileged background.
A “Master Of The Universe” from a picture-perfect family is to be condemned much more strongly for his wanton villainies than a semi-literate gangbanger with a drug-addled mother and an incarcerated father (and these days if the former be white and the latter black then it will be argued that we should be even more understanding). What’s good for the goose is certainly good for the gander.
Side note: As I made my way through this piece an interesting quote jumped out at me:
To me, it’s obvious we should think seriously about the early American political figures, because the early economic institutions, the three-fifths compromise, the adoption of new states into the union, and so on are all importantly interrelated with the institution of slavery.
It seems that the “1619 Project” is one of the fountains of learning that Mr. Stein goes to quench his intellectual thirst. But this is neither here nor there so I will leave it as merely a curiosity perhaps to be dealt with another time.
Stein continues his attempts to the concepts of moral culpability and moral relativism by stating “the fact that an act is accepted or widely practiced does not reduce culpability”. This is contrary to the most elemental common sense. If this statement be true, then it would leave us in the ludicrous position of affirming that a modern urbane man who practices cannibalism is as morally culpable as the savage from a head-hunting tribe that regularly enjoys the consumption of human flesh.
The motherly example he gives as support is as follows:
That’s why, when your mother [rhetorically] asks, ‘If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?’ the correct answer is ‘No.’
This statement requires further inspection. Surely, the answers that you would receive to a question of that sort is liable to change depending on the societal context.
In the specific moral environment in which we operate where jumping off bridges is considered a sign of suicidal insanity the answers given would be highly homogeneous but, in a dystopian society, where jumping off bridges was tolerated as a form of self-expression the answers given would be definitely mixed.
Rather abruptly he graciously extends what he believes to be an olive branch by putting forth a rather conciliatory principle to live by stating “But if that’s so, then perhaps we would do well to focus our civic identity and sense of moral character on acts rather than people.” First things first, acts and the people who commit them are by definition almost impossibly intertwined as acts are not committed ex nihilo but by people.
Anyway, supporters of statues of say Columbus or Confederate historical figures emphatically state that is exactly what they are already doing (respectively celebrating either the discovery of the New World or the heroic defense of beleaguered states against federal tyranny).
Stein tries to pull a fast one on us near the end with this gem “Contrary to Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Jr., or figures who might be venerated by radicals…” Now, now, Mr. Stein, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. might elicit a few grumblings here and there but all in all they are beloved by the general public across the board.
Why not choose figures who are as equally venerated by American radicals but are actually controversial such as Fidel Castro? Surely the allowances and attempts at moral understanding that “reactionary” Matt Walsh gives Christopher Columbus is close to if not equal to that given to Mr. Castro by said American radicals. And let us also remember that Castro (unlike say Columbus) committed his cruelties decades not centuries ago.
This response is not meant to or has tried to function merely as a point by point mechanistic refutation of every single objectionable quotation in Mr. Stein’s piece (they are legion) nor as some sort of specific apologia for Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson or Robert E. Lee (or any other historical personage for that matter).
It is simply meant to dispel certain myths and correct certain powerful misconceptions individuals might have regarding the conservative moral position on the nation’s controversial statues and monuments.
