Summary
As the 2008 presidential election nears, Americans on both the right and the left agree that America is in a moral crisis. For most citizens, though, this crisis is not about abortion, gay marriage, or the Òwar on Christmas,Ó but a growing culture of self-interest and a lack of greater purpose. Just as Americans must determine the leader that best represents our true values, America’s elected officials must look to restore our core beliefs of personal responsibility and duty to others. But we need a clear vision. In The Moral Center, now with a new introduction and updated throughout, Callahan explains how progressives and moderates can find common ground to build a new majority and a unified America.
From the publisher
DAVID CALLAHAN is cofounder of and senior fellow at the public policy center Demos. Author of six previous books, including The Cheating Culture, he writes frequently for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications. He received a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University and lives in New York City.
From the jacket flap
"[David Callahan is] a new liberal with old values." --The New York Times
Nothing's the matter with Kansas, David Callahan argues in this forceful follow-up to The Cheating Culture Americans voting their values are responding to a real moral crisis. But the problems for most Americans are not abortion, gay marriage, or the "war on Christmas." Instead they're the fears and worries that neither party is addressing -- that selfishnessand greed arecareening out of control, that we can't protect our children from our violent and consumerist culture, that no one calls us to any greater purpose. As Republicans veer into zealotry, liberals can find common ground with moderates and build a new majority. But to alleviate the moral anxieties that help drive GOP electoral victories, they need a powerful vision.
In The Moral Center, Callahan articulates that vision as he offers an escape from the dead-end culture war. With insights garnered from in-depth research and interviews with advocates on both sides of the partisan divide, he examines some of our most polarized conflicts in seven key areas --family, sex, media, crime, work, poverty, and patriotism-- and presents unexpected solutions that lay out a new road map to a unified America.
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Details
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Title
The Moral Center: How Progressives Can Unite America Around Our Shared Values
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Author
David Callahan
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Binding
Paperback
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Pages
272
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Volumes
1
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Language
ENG
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Publisher
Mariner Books, Orlando
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Date
2007-09-10
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Features
Bibliography, Index, Table of Contents
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ISBN
9780156032988 / 0156032988
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Weight
0.56 lbs (0.25 kg)
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Dimensions
7.92 x 5.62 x 0.71 in (20.12 x 14.27 x 1.80 cm)
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Themes
- Chronological Period: 21st Century
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Dewey Decimal Code
320.51
Excerpt
Chapter One
What’s Really Wrong
YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A BUSH VOTER OR AN EVANgelical Christian to be worried about the moral climate of America. You don’t need to be upset by abortion or gay marriage or sex ed teachers putting condoms on bananas. You don’t have to be up in arms about the influence of Charles Darwin in our schools or the absence of the Ten Commandments from our courthouses.
You may have none of these concernsand yet still feel that something is deeply wrong with the values of America. Maybe you worry that most strangers can’t be trusted. Or that young Americans have lost any sense of purpose beyond getting rich and famous. Or that Hollywood and Madison Avenue influence children more than Mom and Dad. Or that millions lack health care in the world’s richest country. Or that having a strong marriage and family is ever less compatible with making a living. Maybe you gaped at the television images of people stranded in New Orleans and wondered, How did we ever become so cold-hearted?” Maybe your specific concerns keep changing, but you can’t shake the feeling that American life is getting meaner and more degraded, and that everyone is out for themselves.
For me, it’s all this and also something else: a sense of constantly being tugged away from my real values. I never cared much about money and never saw myself as a covetous kind of person until I moved to New York City, where I had to walk past the townhouses of the rich every day and started reading magazines like New York and the real-estate section of the New York Times. With inequality now at levels that rival the Gilded Age, envy may be the most powerful emotional current in America today, and it’s hard not to get caught in its grip. We live in a time when so many of us look anxiously upward at what we might have or who we could be, as opposed to looking downward and being thankful for all that has come our way. I consider myself a compassionate person who cares about the misfortunes of others, but I’ve learned to tune out the beggars on the subway, even the women who tug their children along and tell horrific stories of lost housing or benefits that I know reflect reality. I’m committed to marriage and familythis is the foundation of true meaning and happiness, I understandbut much of the time I put career first, scrambling after an endless series of external rewards. I want to know my neighbors better and get involved in my community, but I’m busy and preoccupied. Maybe next year. It’s easy to feel that things are not only getting worse, they are also making you a worse person. I don’t have children yet, but I can imagine how parents might lack confidence about passing along their values in this environment.
You’re not alone if you share these feelings. While the complaints of the Christian right echo through our politics every day, the truth is that Americans of all political stripes worry about values, in one way or another. This has been obvious for some time. The 1990s were a decade of peace and prosperityand of Columbine, Monica Lewinsky, and Ferrari-driving twenty-eight-year-old millionaires. Moral angst burned hot beneath the façade of good times, so much so that in 2000 a major poll found that only 12 percent of Americans were satisfied with the moral values of this country, the lowest level for any major issue. More recently, a 2005 pollechoing other pollsfound that a strong majority of Americans believe that people aren’t as honest or moral as they used to be, and an even higher percentage see young people as having a weaker sense of right and wrong than they did fifty years ago. Most Americans also feel that we are too tolerant of bad behavior.
It’s not that values matter more than other issues. They don’t. Scholars like Jeffrey Stonecash and Larry Bartels have documented the enduringin fact, growingrole of class in politics. Poorer whites in particular are still more focused on economic issues than on social ones, contrary to what Thomas Frank argued in What’s the Matter with Kansas? But there is also no question that moral concerns have become bigger issues in recent decades and that public anxieties go well beyond the agenda of religious conservatives.
Yes, voters who named moral values” as their top issue went overwhelmingly for Bush in 2004, and yes, abortion and same-sex marriage have reshaped the political landscape in certain parts of the country. But other issues matter, too. In a Zogby poll conducted after the 2004 election, 33 percent of voters said the nation’s biggest moral problem was greed and materialism” and 31 percent cited poverty and economic justice.” Another post-election surveyof Catholics votersfound that these Americans were more likely to emphasize issues of integrity or the social compact” when they thought of moral values than to focus on abortion or gay marriage. Earlier polls found that a majority of Americans defined poor health care, as well as inequality between whites and minorities, as moral issues.
These anxieties help explain why values stay on the national agenda despite a steady stream of good news. Violent crime is now down to where it was in the late 1960s. Abortions declined sharply in the 1990s, reaching the lowest level since 1975. Teen pregnancy rates also plunged dramatically. Births to unwed mothers have stopped rising. Divorce rates have fallen since their high in the late 1970s, particularly among college-educated couples.
Usually when things get better, public debate moves on to other matters. Not this time. And that suggests that the new moral politics is fueled by more than the longstanding concerns of the Christian right. Something bigger is happening.
If you talk across ideological dividesto Americans left, right, and centera unifying theme of much moral anxiety is a feeling that selfishness is careening out of control. You see this feeling in conservative concerns about divorceand in liberal anger about corporate crime. You see it in the anti-abortion activism on the rightand in the living wage movement on the left. Conservatives worry that kids today grow up wanting to be porn stars; liberals fear that they want to be investment bankers. A lot of Americans fear that the pursuit of self-interest is pushing aside other values in every aspect of life: family, sex, culture, business, education.
But if people of all stripes worry about selfishness, it is conservatives who have defined what kind of selfishness is wrong, who is to blame for it, and how we can find a better moral compass. The right blames selfishness on liberalism, blasting the hedonism and focus on personal rights that emerged in the 1960s. Their solution to our moral state is simple: America needs to return to religion and traditional values. You needn’t agree with the right on the specifics to find reassurance in such appeals. Whatever you may think about Christian conservatives, at least they offer a plan to get America on a different moral path.
At least they clearly say that something has gone very wrong with our moral life. So does the Republican Party that these activists have reshaped in recent decades. And it is no wonder that this party does so well with married voters and parents. Just the fact that conservatives believe it’s possible to change the culture may be enough to turn a great many people into GOP values voters.”
The catch is that the moralists on the right don’t have a real solution to rising selfishness. Not only have they defined the problem far too narrowlyobsessing about sex especiallythey refuse to confront the force that increasingly fans an extreme ethos of self-interest, namely our free-market economy.
Copyright © 2006 by David Callahan
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Media reviews
PRAISE FOR THE MORAL CENTER
"David Callahan is right: politics is based on morality, and the main moral division in America is between those who empathize with others and those who are only out for themselves. This important book takes us to the central issue: Are we all in the same boat? Or are you on your own, buddy?"--George Lakoff, author of Don't Think of an Elephant
PRAISE FOR THE CHEATING CULTURE
"Read this book . . . for [Callahan's] eye-opening portrait of the way we live now, his sobering analysis of how we got here and his prescient warning of where we may be headed if we don't get back our bearings."--Los Angeles Times
About the author
DAVID CALLAHAN is cofounder of and senior fellow at the public policy center Demos. Author of six previous books, he writes frequently for the
New York Times, the
Washington Post, and other publications. He received a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University and lives in New York City.