Sigh. I just can't seem to get over my obsession with Jonathan Haidt. One of the most obvious shortcomings in his theory is dividing his moral foundations into neat categories. Some things go in the harm/care box; some go in the purity/sanctity box and so forth. Haidt listens closely and decides with box things go into. The problem, of course, it that people don't actually think like that. The don't neatly file their moral concerns in one category or another, but often see them in terms of more than one. And they are apt to resent being told that their stated reasons are not why they are "really" upset about an issue.
Haidt strongly criticizes liberals for excluding the concept of the sacred from public discourse. Such exclusion has two undesirable effects -- it makes conservatives feel disenfranchised because their deepest-seated concerns are dismissed and mere bigotry, and it forces them into expressing them in terms that don't fit very well. Abortion is a classic example. Haidt sees abortion as a purity/sanctity issue that conservatives are forced to express in terms of harm/care because purity and sanctity are not treated as legitimate matters of public discourse. Liberals are eager to pounce on any inconsistency as proof that conservative opposition to abortion is really a matter of sanctity, not harm, and therefore illegitimate. (See, you allow an exception for rape! Obviously your opposition to abortion is based on punishing sluts, not protecting innocent babies!) Haidt would rather acknowledge that it is a matter of purity and sanctity, which is a legitimate concern.
The trouble is that these two concepts are not mutually exclusive. It is perfectly possible to see abortion as the murder of an innocent baby and as facilitating illicit sex. Furthermore, seeing abortion in harm/care terms, as preventing the murder of babies can lead to extreme results, such as opposition to stem cell research or in vitro fertilization that are not related to illicit sex.
Furthermore, the blurring of categories can also occur in areas agreed on all hands to be legitimate subjects of public discourse. Haidt's analysis of the Tea Party is a fine example. The Tea Party expresses itself mostly in the language if liberty which, of course, is generally accepted as a proper public policy concern. But (Haidt says), social conservatives are no more attached to liberty than liberals or libertarians, and less so in the classical liberal sense of being free to do whatever you want so long as it does not infringe on the freedom of other. Rather, in his view, Tea Partiers' real concern is justice, particularly a karmic sense of justice, that people should suffer the consequences of bad decisions. But justice, is after all, a perfectly acceptable subject in public discourse. If your real concern is not that paying taxes to support a safety net infringes on your liberty, but that it is unfair, why not say so? Many people, of course, do, but they also continue to express their concern in terms of freedom as well. If people say they see the safety net, not just as unfair, but as a threat to freedom because it raises taxes, we might as well take their word for it and believe that they really do see it in terms of freedom.
All of which is partly just a convoluted way of raising this post, which attempts an analysis. The author suggests that our mistake is to assume a classical liberal definition of freedom -- not being bound by legal constraints. But, he suggests, many people see freedom in other terms -- as not being bound by material constraints. In other words, being rich enough to do what you want. In classical liberal terms, taxes are undesirable, but a relatively small constraint on freedom, because they do not forbid actions, even if they make them somewhat more expensive. But if you see freedom as financial security, then taxes are a very serious attack on freedom; perhaps the ultimate one.
Of course, the author focuses on freedom-as-economic-security only from the perspective of a wealthy person aspiring to be super-rich. To such a person, freedom means never having to worry about money, and taxes are a grave threat. But probably a lot of people who aren't so rich also see freedom as economic security, just less security. To a retiree of limited means to whom a Social Security check is the difference between living modestly and the fear of being out on the street, a Social Security check is freedom, just less freedom. In any event, maybe I should make a new category of how people see freedom.
Incidentally, on the subject of freedom and wealth, I highly recommend this brief but excellent piece by David Frum. He points out that in some societies the rich make their wealth honestly, and in others (Russia, say, and its oligarchs) they do not. One reason, he points out, is that in Russia the path to riches simply is not an honest one, and this has more to do with the nature of society and its institutions than anything else. One should focus, therefore, on the institutions that encourage making a fortune honestly and discourage making one dishonestly.
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