Quotes About Morality

We can now suggest an answer to the questions asked above. If conservatism is based on Strict Father morality, conservatives have the general metaphors of the Moral Order in their conceptual systems, with at least a couple of clauses, namely, God above human beings; human beings above animals and the natural world; adults above children; men above women. The Moral Order hierarchy used to have all the bigoted clauses in it; now it has many open slots available for such clauses. Let

Morality of Reward and Punishment plays an enormous role in the conservative worldview. The reward side rules out any government distribution of wealth or benefits that is not based on free market competition, and it makes the right to the disposition of private property absolute; the punishment side focuses the criminal justice system on retribution.

Rewards and punishments are moral acts; giving someone an appropriate reward or punishment balances the moral books.

Competition therefore is moral; it is a condition for the development and sustenance of the right kind of person. Correspondingly, constraints on competition are immoral; they inhibit the development and sustenance of the right kind of person. Even

Regardless of whether you are progressive, conservative, or biconceptual, though, your morality—your sense of what a person should be and do—is deeply connected to the way your brain triggers emotions and determines whether you feel good or bad in certain situations and about certain ideas. It is worth understanding why.

Morally based framing is everybody's job. Especially reporters'.

The differences are not about efficiency, or practicality, or economics, and they cannot be settled by rational argument about effective administration. They are ethical opinions about what makes good people and a good nation. What

What is punishment and theft to conservatives is civic duty and fairness to liberals. There

But to conservatives whose value system gives priority to Moral Strength, the problem of drugs is the personal lack of the moral strength to just say no. It is a problem of personal values, not of social change or drug treatment centers.

Strict Father morality requires that there are natural, strict, uniform, unchanging standards of behavior that must be followed if society is to function. Another

Since the Strict Father model is what holds Strict Father morality together, interference with the pursuit of self-interest threatens the foundations of the whole Strict Father moral framework—from the efficacy of moral strength to the validity of the moral order. The

The entailments of this metaphorical mode of thought are quite considerable: Moral standards that change with time, or social situation, or ethnicity are a danger to the functioning of society. There is no such thing as progress in morality; what is and is not moral is fixed for all time, and any change of standards in the name of would-be moral progress is really an evil, a chipping away at our moral foundations, a tearing of our moral fabric, and so on.

By Strict Father morality, harsh prison terms for criminals and life imprisonment for repeat offenders are the only moral options.

At the heart of conservatism is strict father morality, as we have seen. But strict father morality has complexities and natural variations. What liberals don't see is that the diversity

But to liberals, who have their own very different moral system, conservative policies are so immoral that any conservative discussion of morality is taken as demagoguery. Of

To nurture children, one must have absolute and regular empathy with them. • To act morally toward people needing help to survive, one must have absolute and regular empathy with them. • Nurturance may require making sacrifices to care for children. • Moral action may require making sacrifices to help truly needy people. If

Global warming is the greatest moral issue facing our generation. Accelerating wealth accumulation by the wealthy is a close runner-up. Together, they present a clear and present danger, not just to the United States, but to the world.

Liberals have a moral system. It is described explicitly in this book. It is organized not around adherence to specific rules, but around a higher principle: Help, don't harm! It is an ethics of care, centering around empathy together with responsibility, both for oneself and others.

Thus, in the cases of harm to children they advocate retribution, but in the cases of impermissible acts by children, they favor restitution. Thus, they too use moral accounting to characterize justice, but the details are different. T

The hierarchy of moral values in Nurturant Parent morality can be expressed as: The Nurturance Group Moral Self-Interest The Strength Group This

The metaphor of Moral Strength sees the world in terms of a war of good against the forces of evil, which must be fought ruthlessly. Ruthless behavior in the name of the good fight is thus seen as justified. Moreover, the metaphor entails that one cannot respect the views of one's adversary: evil does not deserve respect, it deserves to be attacked! The

Therefore, we all start out morally weak, that is, with an overwhelming tendency to do immoral things. Unless our parents intervene to discipline us, we will naturally become immoral. This

In short, the moral hierarchy is an implicit part of the culture wars.

In the strict father model, the "free market" plays a significant, implicit role. The market is a competitive system where the disciplined are rewarded through profit, and the undisciplined (and hence immoral) are punished through poverty. The market is an instrument of morality.