I Too Am a Values Voter
Follow up to: Taking Out “God” is Equality, Not Atheism
Recently, former Republican presidential primary candidate Rick Santorum (of Spreading Santorum fame) gave a speech at the Values Voter Summit. He said a lot of things, such as “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side”, which sounds really funny out of context.
But — and here’s where I get tripped up — Santorum also said:
The conservative movement will always be – and that’s why we founded Patriot Voices – the basic premise of America and American values will always be sustained through two institutions, the church and the family. (Applause.)
And so economic conservatism – libertarian types can say, oh, well, we don’t want to talk about the social issues. Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement. There is no basic values in America in force, and there is no future for our country.
The blatant assumption being, of course, that “values” are only socially conservative values — being against abortion, against gay marriage, against welfare, against separation of church and state, etc. But obviously this isn’t the only notion of “value”, or the only social issues that matter. The conservative movement isn’t the only movement.
And that’s what I’m looking for when I vote. I want the Presidential candidate who is most likely to move America toward my values. I’m a values voter.
However, my values are utilitarian. I want the President who will make the most people in our country as better off as they can. And I see this values question as not one of grandstanding, speculation, or emotions in search of facts. Rather, I see these values connecting emotion and fact and spurring our President to do the research needed to see what kind of difference can be made. What are the costs and benefits of each different kind of abortion? What do we get from separating church and state, or tying them together?
My well educated best guess is that we should be concerned about — in no particular order — racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, ageism, neurotypicalism, animal welfare, the welfare of the developing world, environmental issues, and political issues (health care, crime, drug laws, etc.).
Overall, we should identify which issues are the most pressing; most likely to affect the welfare of people or animals in the most drastic ways; and identify and support solutions to them. But I don’t have all the answers for what should be done, except for using an approach of careful empiricism and skepticism.
I’m a values voter who wants to figure out how to make the world a better place, and I want my President to share my concern for improving global welfare (and not just that of the US or just the human species). But I also want my President to share the same concern for data and the humility that social solutions are just as confusing, hard, and counter-intuitive as economic ones. (I’m confident that anyone who thinks they have obvious answers for what our country should do is probably wrong.)
Santorum again:
But we had a great turnout and a great audience across this country to encourage people of faith, people whose values align with the founding principles of our country, the founding values of our country [...] So it is our job in this election, it is our job, to go out and make a difference. It is our job to go out and talk to fellow believers. And I don’t mean Christians. I mean fellow believers in the American creed, fellow believers in those basic principles that built our country.
This quote from Santorum in the same speech is something that really pisses me off — obviously our founding values were not explicitly religious, and definitely not Christian. America is not — and has never been — a Christian nation, no more than it’s been a “White nation” or a “Heterosexual nation”.
But I agree that it’s our job in this election to go out and make a difference, like Santorum said. Except instead of gathering sanctimonious socially conservative Christians, we should gather our fellow believers in the American creed — those who want to fight for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people, created equal.
If people are created equal as the Declaration of Independence says, we should treat them equally. And what better way to ensure equal treatment than to pursue the collective welfare in a careful and considerate way? What better way to values vote than to prove to everyone that values, ethics, and morality don’t have to be about social conservatism, or even religion?
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I now blog at EverydayUtilitarian.com. I hope you'll join me at my new blog! This page has been left as an archive.
On 17 Sep 2012 in All, Me, Political Commentary, Utilitarianism. 6 Comments.
22 Sep 2012, 5:37 pm
Why would that piss you off? He said he wasn’t talking about “Christians” in the very next sentence.
Well, as someone who knows you, I understand that you really meant, “evolved by a bunch of random mutations from dirt” equal.
:)
25 Sep 2012, 11:47 am
Not too different from Genesis 2:7, eh?
26 Sep 2012, 3:08 pm
If you wish to conflate “intent” with “random,” then, sure, redefine away.
It was meant to be a light-hearted jest but I get the feeling it may not have been taken that way.
On another note, thanks for reinstating the “recent comments” widget and adding the “discussion” tab. Great improvements, along with the comment preview.
26 Sep 2012, 3:12 pm
I took it as a light-hearted jest and tried to jest back. I just thought it was funny that you explicitly referenced “dirt”.
~
No problem. Thanks for your continued feedback. It leads to improvement of the site (relative to what I intuitively assume are mutually shared standards for what constitutes “improvement”).
;)
26 Sep 2012, 3:27 pm
Also, I thought I should answer this:
It’s not the “American values = Christian values” that I was talking about, but rather the “American values = socially conservative values”.
That being said, I do get the personal feel that despite his attempt to extend beyond Christianity, Santorum is also making American values equivalent to religious values (with atheists excluded), like Newt Gingrich.
9 Oct 2012, 3:44 am
I totally agree. I am an atheist but also a Christian – if you’re confused, so is everyone – I’m a Unitarian Universalist who believes we all experience God through the human experience. God is love, the desire to be good, morality – “values.” There is awe and wonder in the world of science, a sense of humility, a place in the family of things. There is definitely a religion in there, whatever you call it. No labels, every label, who cares. Humanism.
Anyway, I have values. But they do not coincide so neatly with leftist politics as yours do. I value the private conscience of every individual, the right to be left alone, the right to live and let live. I believe that government exists ONLY to protect individual liberties and rights from the actions of others.
I believe that no one has the right to decide how much a farmer, teacher, or bus driver should be paid. If the amount is less than the market would pay, it is unjust; if more, it is a subsidy of that field, meaning there are not enough people who want to buy the crops, etc., and thus the labor is a waste of human resources. No one should labor without receiving fair wages representing the actual usefulness and desirability of the good that is produced.
I believe the social engineering experiments of the past 60 years have dramatically failed due to hypocrisy of people believing they know how to “fix” the world. We are subsidizing poverty and perpetuating racism – Big Government has resulted in skyrocketing national debt with no end in sight, civil liberties violations, endless and unnecessary wars and international intervention, drug wars, expanding prisons/jails, a centralized definition of what type of education is “correct,” subsidies of useless goods (non-organic, high-pesticide farmland), a centralized determination of “the price” of a high-quality teacher rather than a fair, free market price, and the list goes on.
Do people need a centralized ruler to instruct and organize the minutiae of their lives, from uniform education to uniform healthcare (ignoring disparate needs and beliefs of different religious groups)? Or do they only need a centralized government to protect them when the right to “live and let live” is encroached upon? I strongly believe the latter leads to less suffering and poverty. I would rather see a “mincome” (a nominal monthly amount given to every citizen to spend as they like, by choice) than a government that decides how each person should live their lives. It might not be the best solution, but it can’t be more expensive or more intrusive than what we currently have.
“Do-gooder” interventions such as minimum wage have only led to increased unemployment, too many people fleeing to education as an escape from that unemployment (rather than to pursue their dreams) meaning there is less return on the education investment. Minimum wage has further acted as a barrier to entry into the business world – minimum wage disproportionately affects struggling, minority-owned businesses in low-income neighborhoods. Elites in Congress are too likely to enact these sorts of policies – that sound good, but actually benefit big, wealthy corps.
There are no falafel stands in the ghetto. Our endless social-engineering regulations have acted to shut out entire populations from the business world. Why are we putting our trust into the hands of elite, centrally-located, corporate-influenced legislatures to “fix” socioeconomic problems that are infinitely complex? Particularly when big spending can temporarily ease human problems, but in truth merely defers the problem by borrowing (stealing) from future generations. What possible incentive do short-term politicians have to avoid that outcome?
You would think that with $16 trillion in debt and endless regulations intended to help the people and the poor, we would have fewer people living in poverty rather than increasing numbers needing food stamps to eke out an existence.
I think we need “atheist politics” – an evidence-based, cost-benefit analysis of law that focuses on protecting individual conscience and choice.
It’s interesting to me that we’re both so committed to objectivism and trying to make the world better, and have come to such different conclusions about how to make that happen. I wish we could just “live and let live,” but the uniformity and conflict caused by big gov’t won’t let that happen, we’ll be fighting for control of it/our values for some time to come.