When a child is born he begins a process of moral development. Ask a child why it is bad when someone's "mommy" dies and the answer will almost always list disadvantages to the child; there will be no-one to love, feed, do dishes for the children left behind. Later the child will be able to express that such a death is bad because the surviving child loved his mother. Still later, the mother's desire to continue living will be noticed and accounted for.

These stages are well known and they are the same all over the world. Each one logically builds upon the previous one in the same way that concepts in math or science build upon each other. For example, just as one cannot understand calculus without understanding arithmetic, neither can one understand the nth level of moral concepts without first understanding the nth-1 concepts.

There are seven conceptual levels which are usually numbered 1 through 6 with a four-and-a-half thrown in because the early researchers missed that level since it usually lasts only a year or two. (For more information a good keyword to google is "Lawrence Kohlberg.")

75% of people never make it past level 4. This is sad because the next level is where the needs of other people begin to be recognized for the first time.

It is quite easy to tell which concepts someone understands; simply ask them why something they value is to be preferred and see which information structures they refer to in their answer.

The founding fathers regularly used language from level 5 -- "freedom, justice", etc. Those concepts do indeed describe objects of value. But a level 5 person has a hard time rigerously explaining WHY freedom and justice are to be valued over any other concepts; for example, why not jollyness and sloth? To answer that question concepts from level 6 are needed.

Level 6 is the last level. This is known because the concepts follow logically whereas concepts from the previous levels do not.

I bring this up because justifications and explanations from conservatives regularly use concepts from level 4 and when they do use concepts from level 6 conservatives usually get it wrong as if they are repeating what they have heard. Liberals use language from level 6 almost exclusivly. Sadly, "W" often uses concepts from level 3!

If this is true, and there is considerable evidence, both logical and experimental, that it is, conservatives need to do some serious soul searching and research instead of merely asserting that liberals do not seem to make any sense. (Of course they do not seem to make sense if the hearer does not have the necessary conceptual knowledge to understand. The situation is analogous to that of one who does not understand arithmetic reading a text on calculus.)

Before now, many liberals ignored the seeming childishness of the level four concepts used by conservatives. Now, however, people are dying and those incomplete ideas have become dangerous. It's as if a child is justifing killing his mother because he has found a replacement who can do the dishes, etc. Level 6 is good news, and liberals need to become proactive in spreading it now.

Bruce

Quite the contrary, I find that liberals support certain policies because to declare one's support for certain policies is seen as a declaration of one's moral superiority. "The Vision of the Anointed" by Thomas Sowell is a lengthy documentation of this phenomenon. The subtitle pretty well summarizes it: "Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy". Example after example show the failures of liberal policies, followed by liberals redefining what success means for the policy.

For example, liberal justifications for expanding the welfare state in the 1960's centered around the idea of lifting impoverished people up into a state of independence and self-sufficiency. The welfare state has done the exact opposite for decades now, so success is redefined by pointing out that a certain welfare recipient has enough food and shelter to not be too materially deprived. More importantly, supporting the welfare programs proves that one is compassionate towards the poor, while conservatives must oppose the programs out of mean-spiritedness and hatred towards the poor. Conservative rationalizations for their opposition are not to be believed, being a mere facade that the morally superior liberal can see right through.

After observing this process for decades, it seems obvious that liberals support liberal policies not because they accomplish great things in this world, but because they make liberals feel good about themselves. The appropriate term here is "moral narcissism." Is that part of the "level 6 thinking" that you were discussing?

Clark,
Thank you for your comments.
I am not sure that you are disagreeing with any of my comments. My assertions were:

* People develop morally (origional sin).
* Some well-done research has found seven levels of this development. (Though no doubt there will be improvements to the model as time passes.)
* Conservatives most often use concepts from the fourth level.
* The Founding Fathers mostly used language from level five.
* "W" uses language from level three sometimes.
* Liberals most often use language from level six.

Do you disagree with any of these? If so, I'm interested.

My point is about overarching models of morality; so, for example, suppose, as you say, all liberals use level 6 moral concepts out of self-rightousness. Still, level 6 is built upon level 5 and thus contains more information. No doubt many liberals are self-rightous. Still, people who want to do what is best can use those concepts to help them determine what that is in complex cases such as with the homosexuality or abortion issues. A person with only a level 2 conceptual framework, for example, would probably not even be able to understand the issues, much less create a rational justification for them.

As for your comments on Sowell, I greatly appreciate Sowell's work. Social systems are much like complex software -- there are always bugs so the improvement process should never stop. The 60's and the civil rights movement showed that merely having a good motive is not enough. BUT... That does not mean the motives were not correct or that we should not strive for improvement based on correct motives. Sowell's work provides course corrections: welfare has problems. Still, the motive behind the direction is still correct. We learned by trying welfare. Many were helped, but many others were, sadly, harmed. We can take that knowledge (thanks Sowell) and, correctly motivated and with the wisdom gained through hindsite, go forward, ever trying again to do what is right.

It does, indeed, seem mean-spirited to a liberal when conservatives use the argument "That plan to help the poor had bugs; therefore, we don't want anyone thinking about how to help the poor anymore." A non-mean-spirited position would be "That plan didn't work. The problems were X, Y, and Z. We can solve them by X', Y', and Z'. Let's do it!" Furthermore, if I may allow my religious beliefs into this discussion, such a view seems distinctly anti-Christian. I realize that you may not be a Christian, but for me it is important to note that when God rejects people during the final judgement his comment is not "you didn't say the sinner's prayer" or "you didn't vote for small government" but "I was hungary and you didn't feed me, thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. Depart from me, for I never knew you." If we did not have a government by, of, and for the People it might be acceptable to use the excuse that the government is not a tool that we have at our disposal. But we DO have a government by, of, and for the People, meaning that the government is one of the tools we have at our disposal for doing our will.

Sincerely,

Bruce

Thanks for the reply. To avoid being overly long, I will limit my comments to the welfare issues raised, as a sort of case study.

1) Conservatives do not believe that the welfare system has a few bugs. They believe that the whole design is flawed because liberals have fundamental misconceptions about human nature and the limits of government action.

2) As a result, conservatives propose radical restructuring, moving responsibilities to private charities to some degree, placing time limits on the remaining government programs, re-evaluating programs to avoid providing incentives to not marry or to bear children out of wedlock, etc. These hardly fit your caricature of the mean-spirited conservatives who don't want to think about the poor any more, a comment which betrays your lack of familiarity with conservative writings.

3) Conservatives have pursued these reforms for the last two decades and have met great opposition from liberals/Democrats. In contrast, what have liberals done besides defend the status quo of the welfare state? Can you provide examples of what else they have done?

4) The conservative thinking I have read about these issues is at a high conceptual level. Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" and "The Vision of the Anointed", and Charles Murray's "In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government" are excellent examples at a high level of discourse. Liberals have generally ignored these works, and the few efforts at rebuttal I have seen have been boilerplate sloganeering. If you would care to read these works and provide a more intelligent critique, perhaps you would be breaking new ground as a liberal.

Clark,
Sowell's "constrained vision", that of the "benighted" is closely related to the "level 4" conceptual framework. Likewise, the "unconstrained" vision of the "anointed" is closly related to the "level 6" framework.

I would love to make an exhaustive comparison, but not in this forum. Here is a very brief summary of my argument.

The level 4 morality conceptual framework does not provide sufficient means for coming to conclusions about morality apart from rules, laws, traditions, etc. However, moral decisions are at the heart of social and policy decisions. Because of these two facts, people with only the moral concepts from level 4 cannot understand how those with level 6 concepts come to conclusions. The decisions of activist judges seem random and dangerous, the details of social policies seem incomprehensible, the liberal definitions of freedom and justice seem odd or arbitrary.

Because those who are missing the level 5+ concepts cannot understand how policy or social structures work with regard to moral issues, they assume that no one else can understand them either. Therefore the maxim "humans are imperfect and limited." However, it is an invalid argument that "since I cannot understand complex social or legal systems, it must not be possible for anyone to understand them."

An "Anointed" one's rebuttle is that no one knows everything, but more knowledge means better decisions and we have a lot of knowledge. There are huge models of such systems in software that accurately (but not perfectly) simulate market economies, so to say that it is impossible to build such models is a little like saying "It's impossible for a computer to play chess." It's been done, and the results getting better all the time.

The concepts from level 6 predict much more about human behavior than those of level 4; a LOT more! For example, the reactions of Europeans and Arabs that have transpired are obvious results given level 6 concepts. Cheney and Crew appear to be mystified as to why the whole world isn't bowing down in worship. It's because their model of how humans react in moral situations is several lacking.

It is important to consider whether this is true because, according to liberals, massive wrongs are being committed that conservatives seem to be blind to. However, remember that since I am suggesting that concervatives are missing key concepts merely asking "are the liberals correct?" and running it through your filter will produce the answer "no, they are wrong." That is because the filter is lacking the concepts necessary for correctly answering the question. I hope conservatives will do some soul-searching and truly try to understand the "mysteries of the liberal." Not only for the sake of truth, but for the sake of the millions whose suffering, it is claimed, is invisible to conservatives.