The Political Morality Fallacy

...Is a term for this I made up myself. Moving on-

I'm really getting sick of this. Haven't you noticed this statement often? "People on the Right/Left are clearly morally superior than those on the Left/Right." Why can't we just drop the notion that political beliefs involve morals? Why can't we just accept both the left and the right are equally legitimate beliefs, and are both morally neutral in nature?

They call themselves seamstresses -Feet Of Clay

Some political arguments are based in fundamentally different moral systems than others, such that accepting one necessitates treating another as "evil." (Compare the arguments of libertarians who view freedom as the highest good with those of socialists who would gladly curtail freedom to promote social welfare.)

edited 19th Oct '11 5:22:07 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Golden Mean Fallacy.

There's no way that a government's policies can be morally neutral, unless you're a moral relativist to the point of nihilism. But, if we were moral nihilists, this thread wouldn't exist.

edited 19th Oct '11 5:36:14 PM by Grain

Anime geemu wo shinasai!

All political ideologies are equally moral, because, as ideas, they do not have any real moral value. Coming at them with personal axioms can result in the assigning of moral value (i.e. if one is a utilitarian, for example, some views may come across as unacceptable, on a subjective scale), but they are not objectively wrong or right.

However, moral value is not the same as validity, and here is where political ideologies cease to be equal. Validity being how well they function when taken "out of the lab" and applied to real life.

However, something not being valid, or, if one prefers, practical, does not make it immoral. It just makes it impractical.

I am now known as Flyboy.

Being left or right is a collection and generalization of many different politically oriented beliefs on individual issues. And those beliefs can be deemed right or wrong. It's the overgeneralizing into left/right spectrum that causes problems. Simply calling someone left or right and then making judgments on that vague labeling undermines what's exactly discussed.

At the very least we should drop the left-right spectrum and look at things in a 2D frame.

Now using Trivialis handle.

Why does "fallacy" mean "something that's wrong" now?

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Because the internet likes to use words it doesn't understand to look smart.

go ahead and do every stupid thing you can imagine

...Because differing political beliefs sometimes translate into different policies, with different outcomes? Because some outcomes are better - or more desirable, which is functionally the same thing - than others? Because achieving the better/best option is what morality is all about?

Do you attach morality to intent/consequences, or do you refrain from making any value judgments?

edited 19th Oct '11 6:19:37 PM by Penguin4Senate

The Golden Mean Fallacy, which someone has already pointed out and is an actual fallacy.

Look it up.

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

Fallacy Fallacy

Fight smart, not fair.

That's something else.

I'd also ask what can be seen as a moral issue, if not politics.

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I'm pretty sure saying "that's fallacious" meaning "that's wrong" is an instance of Fallacy Fallacy isn't it?

Fight smart, not fair.

No.

Fallacy fallacy is where you assume the conclusion is false just because the reasoning is fallacious. It's a lot more specific than "that's wrong, which means that's fallacious"- in fact, it's basically the opposite order (that's fallacious, which means it's wrong.)

What you're describing is people just having an incorrect and frankly stupid definition of fallacy.

edited 20th Oct '11 12:19:58 AM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

^ Which I suppose does raise the question of, however unsound the OP's reasoning might be, whether there is any truth to the proposition in question, that the political left and right are both morally neutral.

I think they may be, but only because they are both vague groupings which each incorporate a range of political positions, both moral and otherwise.

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Technically, people who claim they're morally superior are right from their point of view. Blue-and-Orange Morality and all.

A single phrase renders Christianity a delusional cult

Well, yes, obviously, but unless you subscribe to moral relativism or some related worldview that's not really a terribly enlightening piece of information and could be just as accurately applied to e.g. a terrorist faction as the political left or right.

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Then the problem is just that it's a non-debate. The clear assertion in the first post is that all political positions are amoral.

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The irony is that one of the tenants of liberalism is moral relativism. Moral relativism is the belief that are moral systems are equally valid. Yet, parodoxically, liberals tout liberlaism as it was some sort of universal truth.

TU NE CEDE MALIS CLASS OF 1971

^^ Which I would argue is plainly false, unless you choose to abandon morality altogether. There may be a case to be made for it, I don't know.

^ Factually incorrect, badly spelled and of dubious relevance. How does that pertain to the question of morality?

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No. They both have stated directions they wish to take government in, and those directions will have consequences that impact the people of said country. The effect of those consequences is the "morality" of each party, in my mind, and I severely doubt that both sets of consequences come out to a wash. In fact, if I believed that, I wouldn't vote for either party.

In fact, no one believes that or they wouldn't bother voting. Obviously people believe one side or the other to be superior.

I don't think we could take this any further without trying to address "what is morality" and that, to me, is a tedious and insoluble argument that's too far off-topic. So let's just leave it at "this is stupid."

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

Not necessarily "superior", just "better suited to my interests" can be enough for some people.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

And there are a lot of people, myself included, who don't think it can be simplified into "this side are good, this side are bad".

I mean, for one thing, the two "sides" aren't really sides at all, just categories. I'm totally a lefty, not exactly a moderate, either, but there are left wing ideologies I would strongly oppose and right wing ideologies that are admirable enough in their own way.

Then there's the question of whether, when assessing the morality of an action, you consider intent or consequences or both and so on. It's not a black and white thing. You can't easily declare one "wing" to be good and the other to be bad; it's just not that simple.

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Yes, it's never that simple. This is why humans developed the left-right spectrum: To simplify political ideologies. If political ideologies could be understood easily, then there wouldn't BE a left-right spectrum. It's not black and white, but it's so inconveniently complicated when NOT painted black and white, so instead of having crossfires between dozens of political ideologies, it's simply more practical to divide said ideologies into two groups.

Having that said, the left-right spectrum trades ideological accuracy for political convenience. The same idea can be applied to moral relativism: People are too tired with working in the office to think about other culture's morals, so let's just say all values are equally valid and be done with it and continue working in our unsatisfied lives while dreaming of how much better things could have been.

I stand bewildered at the idea that you can hold whatever political idea you want and have that be morally neutral by way of it being about politics, as though politics was some separate sphere from the rest of life and not to be judged by the same rules. Voting for a politician who will do horrible things, knowing he will do horrible things, is just as bad as doing those things yourself.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Yes. And I would agree that such statements are a problem, but not because of "the notion that political beliefs involve morals". They're a problem because of other inaccurate, overly simplistic, and destructive notions associated with them. For example, the notion that the left and right are mutually exclusive, homogeneous categories, and the notion that having different political beliefs means a person must be malevolent, stupid, or insane. These are the sorts of notions we need to drop.