The Enemy At Home (20 page)

Some on the left may object to being characterized as defenders and promoters of pornography. They might point out that a sizable minority of feminists have been vocal in their denunciation of pornography. If, however, you carefully read the work of antiporn feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, you will see that their only objection is on the grounds of equality. Pornography, MacKinnon writes, represents “an institution of gender inequality.” She condemns pornography because it objectifies women and not men. One of MacKinnon’s essays is titled “Not a Moral Issue.”
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She disassociates herself from the traditional view that pornography is morally corrupting. Presumably if men and women were degraded in the same manner and to the same degree, MacKinnon’s objection to pornography would vanish.

Nor should liberal enthusiasm for pornography be confused with an absolute commitment to free speech. Liberals know that there are many cases—defamation, criminal solicitation, false advertising, copyright infringement, and so on—where speech is restricted. Liberals generally support these restrictions as compatible with the First Amendment. Moreover, many liberals frequently demand new restrictions on free speech when liberal values are threatened. Several left-leaning organizations support campus restrictions on “hate speech” that demeans minorities. Groups like the ACLU support restrictions on political donations—a form of political speech—in the name of campaign finance reform. Therefore when liberals tirelessly champion the cause of pornographers, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that these liberals do not consider obscene and pornographic expression to be especially harmful and in some cases even approve of it.

LIBERAL ARGUMENTS IN
favor of contemporary cultural trends have led some conservatives to conclude that liberals are proponents of relativism or “anything goes,” or that liberals are simply “against morality.” But there are no liberals who believe that “anything goes,” nor is the liberal position a repudiation of morality as such. Rather, liberals who champion pornography and cultural depravity are expressing a new morality. We should not miss the moral thrust of contemporary liberalism just because liberal morality differs so markedly from traditional morality. How, then, do we recognize this new morality? We can discover it by seeing the difference between the conduct of pornographers and the conduct of those who uphold the pornographers’ “rights.”

The pornographer generally knows that he is a sleazy operator. I have read interviews with men like Larry Flynt and Al Goldstein, the publisher of
Screw
magazine. Typically such men do not even try to defend the social value of what they do, other than to point out that there is a demand for it. It is only the ACLU and its supporters who celebrate the pornographer as a paragon of the First Amendment and a contemporary social hero. Social liberals like Frank Rich seem to have a much higher view of Flynt than Flynt himself. In this sense, the liberal defense of pornography is more perverted than the pornography itself.

Similarly the sexual deviant usually recognizes that he is doing something wrong. Bill Clinton admits in his autobiography that he understood that, as president, he should not be seducing the interns. Clinton also acknowledges that he lied about his actions, and he knew the lies were wrong. It is only in the liberal universe that Clinton’s conduct—which all traditional cultures revile, and which the Muslims would punish by stoning or flogging—becomes a minor peccadillo that is of no public concern and that is permissible to lie about even in a judicial proceeding. Again, the liberal adopts a more forgiving view of presidential sex abuse than the abuser himself.

None of this is to suggest, either in the domain of pornography or in the Clinton scandals, the absence of liberal moral outrage. During the Clinton scandals, the behavior that really infuriated liberals was the “inquisition” conducted by independent counsel Ken Starr. Similarly, many liberals are genuinely indignant when they confront people who condemn cultural depravity, or who seek to restrict pornography. In such cases, liberal condemnation goes into high throttle: these people are not merely mistaken or overzealous but unscrupulous, dangerous, and, yes, evil. The temperature of ideological indignation, and the language of good and evil, shows the presence of a rival morality. Call it liberal morality. It is highly instructive to contrast liberal morality with traditional morality. By doing this, we can better understand why liberals defend and promote values that are controversial in America and deeply revolting to people in traditional societies, especially in the Muslim world.

Liberal morality emerged in resistance to the traditional morality that holds sway in all traditional cultures and that constituted a virtual moral consensus in America prior to the 1960s. In America today, traditional morality is espoused mainly by religious and political conservatives. Traditional morality is based on the notion that there is a moral order in the universe, which establishes an enduring standard of right and wrong. All the major religions of the world agree on the existence of this moral order. There is also a surprising degree of unanimity about the content of the moral order. If we make a list of the virtues that are prized in various cultures, we discover that we are looking at pretty much the same list. Of course, some cultures give priority to promoting this or that virtue, or to eradicating this or that vice, but very rarely do we encounter virtues in one culture that are considered vices in another, or vices in one culture that are championed as virtues in another.

There is also widespread acceptance in traditional societies, as there was in America, that human behavior falls short of the universal moral code. The existence, even the pervasiveness, of violation was never considered an argument against the code. On the contrary, it is precisely because of the imperfection of human nature and the depravity of human conduct that an unwavering moral standard was considered indispensable to provide a guiding light for human aspiration and to bring forth “the better angels of our nature.” Moreover, the traditional moral code was reflected in law. This is not to say that morality and law were ever identical. There are things that are immoral—like greed and selfishness—that are not, by themselves, illegal. There are actions that are against the law, like building without a permit or leaving your car in a No Parking zone, that are not necessarily immoral. Even so, the traditional understanding is that the law is a moral teacher and should generally reflect the precepts of the shared moral code.

Many liberals reacted against the traditional moral code because they viewed it as a burden, and an obstacle to freedom. Since the traditional code was so deeply entrenched in Western society, the first moral rebels were also social rebels. These were the bohemians, most of whom were artists of one sort or another: poets, writers, sculptors, painters, and so on. You could find them on the Left Bank of Paris in the nineteenth century, or in Greenwich Village in New York in the early twentieth century. Fitzgerald’s Gatsby—a self-created individual who thinks nothing about pursuing a married woman because he obeys no rule other than the imperative of his inner imagination—is the classic expression of the high-flying bohemianism of the roaring twenties. The term “bohemian” was originally used to describe Gypsies, who were thought to have come from Bohemia in Central Europe. Like the Gypsies, the bohemians lived on the margins of respectable society and openly flouted its moral rules, which they spurned as “bourgeois morality.” The bohemians lived in obedience to a new code, which has now become liberal morality.

This liberal morality did not become a mainstream phenomenon in the West until the 1960s, when bohemian values became the values of the counterculture. In a recent study, Elizabeth Wilson observes that “bohemian values have penetrated mainstream society to a degree unthinkable a hundred years ago,” so that today we commonly encounter attitudes and behavior “once considered completely beyond the pale.”
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Some in America regard the counterculture as largely the product of the Vietnam War, although it also developed in Europe, where the Vietnam War had no direct relevance. It is also inaccurate to think of liberal morality as the product of movements of social liberation, such as the feminist movement and the homosexual rights movement. In many ways those movements were themselves the product of the new morality. Their success is inconceivable apart from liberal morality, because this morality supplied the ethical vocabulary in which the champions of sexual freedom and sexual equality articulated their deepest concerns.

What, then, is liberal morality? Its premise is that right and wrong reside not in some invisible external order but within the inner reaches of our own heart. Its operating maxim is the one that Polonius gives to Laertes in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet,
“To thine own self be true.” The crucial difference between the traditional view and the liberal view is not in the content of morality but in the source of morality. Liberal morality holds that in a given situation—as when faced with a moral choice—we should not consult some external set of rules but look within ourselves to our moral rudder. Plumbing our inner depths, we have access through our feelings to a kind of “second self” or “inner self.” This is nothing other than our best self: it is the self uncorrupted by the evils of society. Indeed it can be viewed as the voice of nature within us. In the liberal view, human nature is in its original sense good but has been distorted by society. That is why liberals so often excuse irresponsible and even criminal behavior by saying, in effect, “Society made him do it.”

As philosopher Charles Taylor puts it, the morality of the “inner self” is an attempt to achieve wholeness and self-fulfillment by “recovering authentic moral contact with ourselves.”
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This morality is very appealing, because it celebrates individuality and moral freedom and places very few burdens on behavior. It celebrates individuality because it presumes that each person has his or her own way of being, which is revealed through an inward sensibility. It offers moral freedom because although one is obliged to follow what his heart says, ultimately he is accountable to no one other than himself.

Moreover, liberal morality casts aside many of the old and restrictive rules that insist, in one way or another, “Thou shalt not.” There is no longer an external moral authority to constrain people from watching pornography or coveting their neighbor’s wife. What used to be considered sexually deviant or perverted under the old order becomes permitted as an expression of autonomy and individuality. Traditional forms of excess become excusable, even commendable, as modes of self-realization and self-discovery. This is not to say that morality becomes arbitrary. Consider some typical dilemmas. Do I, Jane, love Bill? Should I become a poet, or go to business school? The liberal view is not that any answer will do, or that all answers are equally right, but that there is a correct answer and your heart will tell you what it is. So morality is authoritative and at the same time subjective, because each person must decide for himself or herself what is right in a particular situation.

If there is a villain in the liberal story, it is traditional morality itself. The new code of individuality is fiercely intolerant of the old moral code—or indeed any code—that subjects individual choices to external judgment. Traditional morality and its defenders become objects of liberal antagonism, because they are viewed as “judgmental” and “repressive” and therefore as enemies of freedom. Consequently liberals become indignant whenever they encounter traditional morality, and many do whatever they can to subvert it. In this framework, transgressing the conventions and morals of traditional society becomes a virtue. This is why, when the comedian Ellen DeGeneres in 1997 publicly declared her lesbianism on national television, Vice President Al Gore praised her for her “courage” and her “contribution to society.” Absent liberal morality, Ellen’s behavior would be viewed as strange, and Gore’s as even stranger. It would be as though a leading public figure had announced a press conference to declare his preference for oral sex. Such a revelation of his nocturnal habits would be regarded as a disgraceful breach of decency. Moreover, it would be unthinkable for one of the nation’s top-ranking leaders to praise such a declaration for its boldness or value to society. He would be more likely to ignore it as beneath the dignity of comment. In Gore’s view, however, Ellen’s revelation was commendable because here was a glamorous figure and a role model asserting sexual autonomy and repudiating traditional morals.

The liberals’ strongest charge against traditionalists is that they are hypocrites. This charge is easy to sustain because traditionalists inevitably fall short of the high moral bar that they set for themselves. By contrast, liberals are immune to the accusation of hypocrisy because in the sexual domain they do not espouse external moral standards at all. To sustain a charge of hypocrisy you cannot accuse a liberal of operating a prostitution ring; you have to accuse him of failing to pay the minimum wage! The contempt and even hatred that many liberals exhibit toward traditionalists gives liberalism its crusading zeal. Some conservatives mistakenly regard liberalism as “non-judgmental,” but liberal morality is extremely judgmental in condemning traditional morality.

This explains, for instance, the scorn with which organizations like Planned Parenthood regard efforts to teach sexual modesty and abstinence to young people. Such programs, according to Carol Rose, executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU, are “dangerous to the health and well-being of teens.” Abstinence advocacy is considered ineffective and even harmful because, in the liberal view, it has no chance of restricting teen sexual behavior. The liberal premise is that sex is natural and that young people are going to have it. Of course, modesty is also natural. Moreover, the liberal assumption is on its face implausible: young people were much less active sexually when abstinence was the moral norm, and they are much less active sexually in other cultures where abstinence remains the norm. Wendy Shalit argues that in traditional cultures unmarried young women are instructed to be ashamed of sexual experience, whereas in liberal culture they are induced to be ashamed of their sexual innocence.
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It is liberal morality that teaches young people to suppress modesty and act upon their sexual impulses with the sole caveat that they use contraceptives or other forms of “protection.” Liberal morality dispenses with traditional moral restraints and reduces the scope of sex education to matters of safety and hygiene.