Nannies and Moloch

I caught Diane Rehm on Sirius coming home today and was surprised to hear the gentle southernisms of one Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) talking about his new book on morality, religion and values. Of course I was drawn in and managed to suppress the vague feeling of creepiness that kept coming and going in waves enough to be able to make it to the end of the show.

Senator DeMint was described as the most conservative member of Congress and delivered on that description in his interview. After a short intro on his endorsement of Mitt Romney and a discussion of the currently pending economic stimulus package, DeMint sketched his thesis: anyone who expresses religious values is oppressed by the government; that the reduction in religiosity in America since the 60s has been accompanied by the erosion of the greatness of our society; that the government promotes immorality through various policies; and that the “Democrat Party” was in opposition to good values (he sort of apologized when someone pointed out that “Democrat Party” was a slur and that the party is the “Democratic Party,” though he said that we are a democratic nation and he didn’t associate that with Democrats, thus compounding his slur while claiming he would try to do better)

Now, I can safely say that Jim DeMint has some serious problems with facts, categories and logical argumentation. But that’s to be expected. For instance, he floats the case about a parent in Massachusetts who was incensed that same-sex relationships were mentioned in his child’s school. He then claimed that the parent was arrested for speaking out about this “immoral” education, when in reality (as Diane Rehm’s stand-in from the BBC noted) the parent was arrested for refusing to leave the school premises. DeMint continued on a strange quest to conflate the notion that free speech was being thwarted when people were unable to change policy, as opposed to the commonsense notion of free speech having to do with speech acts, written or verbal.

Many callers questioned his statistical claims concerning a range of issues, as well. When pressed on why he claimed abstinence education was being blocked by evil secular government forces, for instance, rather than the recent discovery that they didn’t much work, he claimed that the Heritage Foundation had statistics that showed that if you combined abstinence education with a commitment on the part of parents to furthering the abstinence cause, that then you might get a 75% reduction in out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Fair enough, but he is completely redefining the problem. I could achieve the same results with secular humanist education: if you get pregnant before you are ready, it will have negative consequences to you, your partner, your parents and society. Don’t do it. Given good basic values of respect for oneself and others, care for others, and belief that harming others is wrong, you get precisely the same result.

DeMint is easily criticized and I didn’t come away with a deep respect for his intellect or his willingness to stretch intellectually to fathom the complex issues. Indeed, he was so wedded to his theses that I felt queasy. But there was one topic that he mentioned that was somewhat interesting to me: does government, though its policies, serve to direct, encourage or sanction moral behavior? DeMint suggested that our values have changed regarding smoking based on government action. A similar argument applies to seatbelts or talking on cell phones while driving.

The odd thing to me is how an arch-conservative seems to have adopted a nanny-state attitude that also reveals a divide between liberals and conservatives. Jonathan Haidt’s research shows that liberals and conservatives differ on a couple of measures, with conservatives valuing “reverence” more than liberals, and liberals value “fairness” more than conservatives. Now an easy application of this principle shows the divide: DeMint castigates homosexuality as immoral while liberals don’t care what others do with their lives and think they should be treated fairly. But for DeMint, government has been shaping those attitudes by failing to criticize the gay community for (in his analysis) the cost to society from AIDS, STDs and other alleged problems. Gay marriage, oddly, remains a problem for DeMint despite the claim that it might lead to longer-term relationships and reduce exactly the issues that he is concerned over. So DeMint wants a nanny state for personal morality, but also wants a small government that is less nanniful about business regulation, guns and the environment.

A strange collection of virtues and values that shows how the 1800s live-on in the backwaters of America.