Morality and the Concept of the Person

It seems to me that if you look at the contrasting approaches of Republicans and Democrats to our current national problems you might well conclude there are two different conceptions of what a person is or should be, especially as moral agents.

Republicans in the House, for example, just passed a bill that would outlaw all funding for Planned Parenthood. I guess this primarily has to do with their moral objection to abortion, but Planned Parenthood offers many more vital services for women than merely abortion. That aside, they obviously believe human life begins at conception, human life is sacred and should in no circumstances be artificially denied. This ignores the life of the mother, the complications of pregnancy, and the realities of possible pathology. But one might argue anti-abortion is a strong moral commitment to the sanctity of human life.

Paradoxically, at the same time they believe all pregnancies should be brought to term and all babies born, they don’t seem to think Planned Parenthood should exist to help mothers in any way. Nor do they believe in providing funds for child care, food stamps, unemployment insurance, health insurance, or welfare in general. In other words, their sense of moral responsibility for children and mothers appears to end at birth.

Not only does moral responsibility for mothers and children arbitrarily stop at birth, Republicans do not seem to bear any responsibility for human welfare at any level. They do not want a minimum wage, they are adamantly opposed to unions, they do not want to provide unemployment insurance for anyone, they don’t want universal health care or even Social Security. Welfare of any kind is anathema to them. Not only that, they tend to be in favor of endless “wars,” and killings, as long as those being killed are “gooks,” “towel-heads,” “krauts,” “Japs,” or other non-whites and non-Christians. This suggests to me that Republican beliefs about morality do not extend beyond a very limited universe. In fact, it probably doesn’t extend much farther than a small number of relatives and individuals they know, and they are recognized as a “person” only within this limited circle. Not only that, in the context of their belief system, they are not only a person, but a “rugged individual.” Vis-à-vis the rest of the world it is up to them to survive, as those who are not like them, those who are poor or disadvantaged or sick or crippled or lazy and shiftless, or widowed, or members of other cultures or religions are not their responsibility. This is a truly strange moral system, virtually unique, in which even some within the same society are not entitled to help, and those outside are simply not included in the moral universe at all.

By contrast, Democrats in general seem to feel a moral responsibility for all, or at least most others, certainly for all within their own society, and not merely their own in-group. They tend to believe it is their moral responsibility in general to take care of those who cannot care for themselves. Thus they want universal health care, aid for dependent children, aid to mothers that need it, aid to the unemployed, Social Security for the elderly, and so on. They see themselves not so much as individuals but more as “persons” embedded in groups, and in a much larger universe, and believe that basic morality should extend to all human beings and groups (except sometimes, like Republicans, when there is a “war”). Here is a case in which a more “primitive” and circumscribed tribal morality is attempting to expanded to include a much wider range of “outsiders.” This attempt, however noble it may be in theory, doesn’t fare well in practice as it inevitably runs up against the problem of “cultural relativity.” That is, how do you accept certain cultural practices that violate your own ideas of the moral, female circumcision, for example, or the sexual abuse of young boys, or the stoning of adulterers, or honor killings, and so on. We see the problems inherent in these attempts in what is increasingly being reported as the “failure of multiculturalism” in Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, and other countries that have attempted to assimilate large numbers of mostly Muslims. Shari’a law does not mesh well with European legal systems, and if immigrants refuse to assimilate, and if the parent culture refuses to accommodate them, the attempts are doomed to fail.

Now we are faced with a situation in which Republican ideas of morality and personal responsibility are far too narrow to be functional, and Democratic ideas of morality and personal responsibility are far too broad to be functional. Republicans want no one to be granted universal human rights, Democrats want everyone to have them, and it seems there is no middle ground. As long as there are these two diametrically opposed views of personal and moral responsibility we are not likely to find a solution. You could say this is an even more fundamental problem, having to do with the nature of human nature. Is it part of our nature to be altruistic or are we, indeed, just rugged individualists looking out mainly for ourselves? Is any change possible? What might it mean for the future?