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The Notre Dame
sociologist Christian Smith once summarized the moral
narrative told by the American left like this: “Once upon a
time, the vast majority” of people suffered in societies
that were “unjust, unhealthy, repressive and oppressive.”
These societies were “reprehensible because of their
deep-rooted inequality, exploitation and irrational
traditionalism — all of which made life very unfair,
unpleasant and short. But the noble human aspiration for
autonomy, equality and prosperity struggled mightily against
the forces of misery and oppression and eventually succeeded
in establishing modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist,
welfare societies.” Despite our progress, “there is much
work to be done to dismantle the powerful vestiges of
inequality, exploitation and repression.” This struggle, as
Smith put it, “is the one mission truly worth dedicating
one’s life to achieving.”
This
is a heroic liberation narrative. For the American left,
African-Americans, women and other victimized groups are the
sacred objects at the center of the story. As liberals circle
around these groups, they bond together and gain a sense of
righteous common purpose.
Contrast
that narrative with one that Ronald Reagan developed in the
1970s and ’80s for conservatism. The clinical psychologist
Drew Westen summarized the Reagan narrative like this: “Once
upon a time,
America
was a shining beacon. Then
liberals came along and erected an enormous federal
bureaucracy that handcuffed the invisible hand of the free
market. They subverted our traditional American values and
opposed God and faith at every step of the way.” For
example, “instead of requiring that people work for a
living, they siphoned money from hard-working Americans and
gave it to Cadillac-driving drug addicts and welfare
queens.” Instead of the “traditional American values of
family, fidelity and personal responsibility, they preached
promiscuity, premarital sex and the gay lifestyle” and
instead of “projecting strength to those who would do evil
around the world, they cut military budgets, disrespected our
soldiers in uniform and burned our flag.” In response,
“Americans decided to take their country back from those who
sought to undermine it.”
This,
too, is a heroic narrative, but it’s a heroism of defense.
In this narrative it’s God and country that are sacred —
hence the importance in conservative iconography of the Bible,
the flag, the military and the founding fathers. But the
subtext in this narrative is about moral order. For social
conservatives, religion and the traditional family are so
important in part because they foster self-control, create
moral order and fend off chaos. (Think of Rick Santorum’s
comment that birth control is bad because it’s “a license
to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things
are supposed to be.”) Liberals are the devil in this
narrative because they want to destroy or subvert all sources
of moral order.
Actually,
there’s a second subtext in the Reagan narrative in which
liberty is the sacred object. Circling around liberty would
seem, on its face, to be more consistent with liberalism and
its many liberation movements than with social conservatism.
But here’s where narrative analysis really helps. Part of
Reagan’s political genius was that he told a single story
about
America
that rallied libertarians and social conservatives,
who are otherwise strange bedfellows. He did this by
presenting liberal activist government as the single devil
that is eternally bent on destroying two different sets of
sacred values — economic liberty and moral order. Only if
all nonliberals unite into a coalition of tribes can this
devil be defeated.
-- Jonathan Heidt, “Forget the Money, Follow the
Sacredness,” New York
Times
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