I mean, they can be. Back in 1855, you might choose a political party based on whether you thought black people were inferior and should be owned by white people. That’s a pretty direct correlation with ethics.
On the other hand, there are also times when one might choose a political party for reasons that are much more, looking for the right word here, umm, detail-oriented. That is, party A is in favor of raising tariffs, believing that will best stimulate the economy and increase employment, while party B is in favor of lowering tariffs, believing that will best stimulate the economy and increase employment. I wouldn’t call the choice between those two hypothetical parties an ethical one at all.
Sure. But my point is that I think the statement “Our politics are the purest representation of our actual ethics in practice.” is overbroad. Politics, even when they’re working fairly well (and they CERTAINLY are not right now) is complicated and messy. To get things done sometimes requires compromise and horsetrading and all sorts of things. And of course political parties hold many positions, and maybe you agree with a party about 85% of their positions but disagree with them on the other 15%, but you are convinced that your stance on all of them is ethically correct, etc, etc, etc.
One’s political positions and choices should certainly be informed by one’s ethics, but I think the connection is messy and complicated, and in no way “pure”.
Because they show how we rank our ethical decisions, they demonstrate what we actually care about and what we are willing to sacrifice. They are the purest demonstration of what we really believe. What we claim to hold dear is not representative. What we act to hold dear is.
So I claim that I hold three things dear:
(1) Free speech
(2) Taco Tuesdays
(3) No Designated Hitters
There are two primary parties: One agrees with me on (1) and (3) but not on (2). The other is the opposite.
There’s also a fringe party which agrees with me on all three.
I decide to to support the major party that agrees with me on two of three, figuring that the fringe party is unlikely to have any real influence, and at least if my party wins, progress will be made on two of the three things I hold dear. Does that mean that I was lying all along when I said that I was ethically committed to Taco Tuesdays?
(Although I’ve kind of lost track of what if anything we’re actually arguing about.)
Except, as **MaxtheVool **pointed out, there are just about never any ideal options at the ballot box in politics. When you vote for Candidate A, you invariably accept that Candidate A, and his party, will likely promote some things which you disagree with. (A lot of liberals dislike the $600 billion America spends on its military annually, for instance, yet few Democrats vote against such budgets in Congress.)
Is politics a way of expressing our ethics? Sure it is. Is it the purest? Absolutely not. There are other forms - such as writing, speaking, volunteering, one’s other actions, one’s lifestyle, one’s behavior - that can be much purer in expression than politics.
Politics is when you put your actions where your mouth is. It is where you show what actually matters to you, who and what you will sacrifice. Distilled ethics.
No, and I wouldn’t date her because being interrogated is obnoxious. I think it is quite easy to observe how people treat other people, and get an idea without direct questioning.
I don’t speak for wonky, but my interpretation wouldn’t be that you were lying about Taco Tuesdays, but I think your list of beliefs is incomplete. A more accurate version might be:
(1) Would rather get progress on some things than be obstinate on everything
(2) Free speech
(3) Taco Tuesdays
(4) No Designated Hitters
Your decision to support a party that agrees with you on two-out-of-three issues is evidence of a certain pragmatism on your part. That is also an ethic which manifests itself in how you vote.
That IMO just stretches ‘ethics’ until it’s basically synonymous with politics. Point 1 is the epitome of the difference between ethics and politics. If the terms were synonymous we wouldn’t need both.
Ethics properly understood are one input into a person’s political views. But people who generally agree on very broad ethical principals like ‘treat people equally’ can end up with widely divergent political views. Political views also reflect, even in the ideal, differences in what people perceive or have learned actually works and is consistent with human nature. Plus in the real world self interest plays a big role in people’s political opinions. Not only self interest as in benefiting from a particular policy tangibly, but in wanting to think of oneself as an enlightened and good person. Picking a side in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for example doesn’t actually butter many people’s bread in tangible terms either way. But one or the other extreme of position is chic in certain circles and highly socially risky in others.
Self image is IMO actually often the major reason for extreme and inflexible political opinions like those of the lady discussed. Some people get the idea a certain type of politics shows virtue, so the more extreme they are the more virtuous. It’s not conscious typically, but still IMO often the case.
But again besides anti-capitalism, which is basically morally compromised by the demonstrated record of non-capitalist systems of trampling human rights, and that the right to property itself is a basic human right, I don’t see the lady’s political opinions as unethical per se. They are just a pretty extreme and rigid set of political opinions.
Of course she would date me, for I am God’s gift to women. Prostitutes pay me for sex. I have so many women making me so many sammiches that I have to swim 152 miles each day just to burn off the calories (it’s an hour well spent, though). I am permanently and universally blackballed by all polygamous religions for fear that, should I join one, all the women on earth would instantly marry me (oh, hell, more sammiches! I’d have to live on the beach and swim laps around the ocean).
Ethics properly defined are an input into political beliefs. But they aren’t the only input as I described. Thus there’s not one for one map for a certain set of ethics mapping to a certain set of political views. Especially not if the ethics are something as general as ‘treat others equally’.
It’s not amusing but a serious problem that so many people delude themselves that political output is the same as ethical input and thus people who don’t hold their political views are unethical and morally inferior.
I think again this comes in part from the non ethical (not unethical necessarily) input to politics that people choose their politics in part in wanting to appear good, to themselves and others. And there’s nothing wrong with that up to a point. It’s that past a point it becomes the frankly cancerous belief that serious disagreement with their politics signals the moral inferiority of their opponent. Or IOW claiming that particular political beliefs are a set of ethics. No, they’re not.
You know, it doesn’t matter whether we call it “ethics” or not, we’re still 100% responsible for our political decisions. Those can be morally inferior, no matter what we claim went into them.
Maybe you weren’t lying - but you are telling me where you are willing to compromise. And if Taco Tuesdays are a literally life-and-death issue for me, it is incredibly difficult (though not impossible) to interpret your willingness to jettison those tacos as an ethical decision, especially if the party you voted for doesn’t just stall on the issue, but actually regresses it.
You are changing my hypothetical. I didn’t say that Taco Tuesdays were “life-and-death”. I said they were important. They are a thing I value. But it’s hard to have more than a tiny number of truly “life-and-death” issues, because it’s so likely that they will end up conflicting with each other.
For instance, in the real world, here are some issues that are important to me:
-gay marriage
-abortion rights
-equal rights for women and racial minorities
-fighting global warming
-economic mobility
-1st amendment freedoms
-fair and impartial elections
-reducing the influence of money in politics
Now, suppose some crazy hypothetical situation arrived in which due to some weird-ass compromise, I could make a deal between many powerful groups that I was quite certain would have the effect of overturning the SC decision that makes gay marriage legal at the national level, but which would devote billions of dollars to fighting global warming, improving education around the nation for underprivileged children, getting rid of gerrymandering and other election-tainting-BS, and enacting sweeping and substantial campaign finance reform. So, one very bad outcome on one issue that’s very important to me (gay marriage), but huge wins on four others (economic mobility, elections, campaign finance, global warming). I would certainly be very tempted to take that compromise. Does that mean I’m lying when I claim to be pro-gay-marriage? Does that mean my belief in gay marriage is paper-thin, ready to be cast aside whenever convenient?
I don’t think so. It just means that when there are a lot of issues that are important to you, they can’t all be paramount. They can’t all be life-or-death-never-give-an-inch. And even if gay marriage is as important as any of them, it’s not as important as ALL of them put together.
And frankly, I’m a bit baffled that it would occur to anyone to even question this type of ethical argument. Sure I’m willing to make compromises on many things. “Making compromises” and “compromising one’s ethics” aren’t the same thing at all.
Heck, slavery is one of the most evil things in history. I would never compromise and say “ok, slavery is only kinda bad, not really full on evil”. But that doesn’t mean that, had I been a pre-civil-war politician I would have been unwilling to make deals with the (evil) southern politicians… to compromise with them. That’s not the same thing as compromising my own beliefs. (Obviously, it depends on the deal… if I say “we should end slavery forever” and they say “no”, and then we come to a compromise that importing slaves will be illegal, but kick the can down the road to future generations to end slavery, well, I’m not going to stop working to make slavery illegal, but at the same time banning the importation of slaves will presumably stop huge numbers of additional innocent people from being enslaved, thus REDUCING HUMAN MISERY. Thus, that compromise WITH PURE EVIL is, imho, inarguably the ethical thing to do… assuming I see no realistic likelihood of actually ending slavery any time soon if I just keep arguing with them.)
I disagree that I’m changing your hypothetical.
I’m pointing out that in your hypothetical for you, Taco Tuesdays are important and dearly held. For me they’re life-and-death. I must assume that either you don’t know how critical they are for me, or that you do know and are willing to sacrifice them (and consequently sacrifice me) anyway. And that does happen quite frequently - an issue that is important to me is vital to someone else.
I think “I’m willing to compromise on this” is a strong statement about my beliefs and ethics - especially when I’m aware of the consequences.
