In my previous three posts, I showed why three of the “big four” slogans offered by “conservatives” as their “principles” are BS—“Small Government,” “Low Taxes,” and “Strong Military.”
In this post, I take on the last—and most sanctimonious—of the “big four”: “Traditional Values.”
This BS “principle” is especially galling because it papers over a whole bevy of vices. In the pre-Trump era, it was consistently used by “conservatives” to cover disreputable prejudices and despicable character flaws. Now, of course, the vast majority of “conservatives” feel liberated by Trump. They openly admit their vices and even try to enact them into law. They seem to think Trump has given them permission to jettison the last decent virtue that kept their vices in check—shame. But even before Trump, “Traditional Values” was “conservative” BS.
Either implicitly or explicitly, the modern conservative movement has always wielded “Traditional Values” as a shield. In the mid-twentieth century it was imported into the movement from “Christian” apologists for white supremacy and racism. (You can read all about the “Christian” roots of white supremacy here.) With the “Reagan Revolution," the next generation of “Christians” labelled themselves the “Moral Majority” and infused the Republican party with a whole new level of hypocrisy.
The “Moral Majority” offered a rationale for all the vices "conservatives" loved most. If they hated seeing minorities and women and LGBTQ people gain civil rights, that was okay with the “Christians," who were only too willing to claim that God hated different and uppity people—they were the ones who needed to change and stop demanding that “Christians" accommodate demands for justice and equality.
The need to use “Traditional Values” as a smokescreen for “conservative” vices proves that shame was still operating at that time as something of a check. “Conservatives” had to keep contorting their “interpretations” of reality to pretend that their motives were not vicious. They still wanted to present themselves as decent so society would not turn against them.
When they learned from Trump that shame was no longer necessary, they were only too ready to jettison it. Republicans don't even bother with contorted justifications any longer. They simply say things that sound good to them, no matter how hateful, self-contradictory, and hypocritical their statements are. They don't care about looking decent. They learned from Trump that they could reveal their viciousness openly and still win.
This instantaneous rejection of shame shows that “conservatives” never believed in “Traditional Values” like religious principles, justice, fair play, good citizenship, and the like. They were just just using the moniker to hide their true motives. The watch-what-they-do-not-what-they-say principle is enough to prove that “Traditional Values” was “conservative” BS.
But there is a deeper reason why “conservatives” loved the smokescreen of “Traditional Values” for so long, a reason that explains why this BS "principle" served their purposes.
Since long before the modern American right-wing movement, "conservatives" have reveled in the notion that tradition somehow hallows existing practices. To them, long-standing customs and laws seem eternal and sanctioned, as it were, by higher powers. Edmund Burke is a patron saint to “conservatives” because he linked the sanctifying power of tradition with the ruling class: in his view, society “works” because the ruling class upholds tradition and promulgates it among the less worthy classes of people.
Beyond the obvious utility of this attitude to those with privilege, there is nothing at all to justify it. Even a cursory view of historical reality shows that society has seldom “worked” for unprivileged people. This is factual evidence that “Traditional Values” is a BS "principle."
But beyond that evidence is the fact that tradition per se has no worth whatsoever. Tradition is good only insofar as it is rooted in truth. If it is rooted in falsehood, then it is simply bad. So planting your flag on “Traditional Values” is nonsense. To have values is fine, but what makes them good values is not tradition but truth.
Once again, “conservatives” are dead wrong when they imagine that liberals do not cherish traditional values or tradition in general. Liberals do indeed accept tradition. They accept it genuinely—provided that it is rooted in truth. If a tradition is not rooted in truth, then liberals try to uproot it. No tradition should survive long after the discovery that it is untrue.
(Both Socrates and the Enlightenment should have taught humanity this principle but “conservatives” never learned it. They ignore Socrates because society killed him for promoting truth. And they are still fighting the battle against the Enlightenment because it still might win. That would be the end of “conservatism.”)
“Conservatives” hate the evaluation of tradition in terms of its truth, especially when it has to do with traditions that are unjust but favorable for themselves. They don’t care whether a tradition is true or not. They only care that it helps them hold onto their privileges. And this is why “conservatives” have always been so fond of the BS “principle” of “Traditional Values": it is a slogan that has been very useful to them in retaining power.
So, ultimately, “Traditional Values” is “conservative” BS because—like the other three “conservative principles" discussed in my previous posts—a disguise for the worship of power. As we have seen in each case, underneath the “big four” BS “principles” lies one and same deadly human vice—the hunger for power. And this is what makes “conservatism” an abiding danger to humanity. If there has been any progress in human history it is a long march away from the need for power and toward the need for justice.
Although there are many differences between liberals and conservatives, one of the most fundamental is this: “conservatives” seek power above all else, whereas liberals seek justice. The one desire is a vice. The other is a virtue.
The previous paragraph seems like the end. It is not. There is something even more fundamental to the soul of “conservatism” than the longing for power, something that explains why “conservatives” prefer power to justice—or to just about anything else for that matter.
But that will have to be the subject of a later post.
With regard to the BS of Traditional Values, there is an incredibly well-funded movement toward Theocracy. If you are not aware of the Blitz Project, it is full of right-wing "christians" who are pushing so-called religious/conservative values that are ultimately destructive of personal and civil rights, anti-abortion, anti-women (who ought to remain in the home and pregnant) and clearly anti LGBT+ in terms of civil rights. Witness the spate of anti-transgender legislation romping through the states these days. I was ordained a Roman Catholic Priest in the mid 70s, but the hypocrisy and underbelly "sin" had me out of there in less than 3 years. I am now an avowed atheist, and fighting against religious privilege at every turn.