\u201cMoral values\u201d played an important role in the recent election, at least in the minds of many conservative pundits and pollsters. To them, red state concern over the erosion of moral values in blue states, universities, and Hollywood delivered a resounding Bush mandate. Despite, or perhaps on account of, such a colossal victory, the red-state of mind continues to harp on the erosion of the nostalgic red state values of moral courage, sexual purity, the distinction between good and evil, and the existence or nature of the \u201csoul\u201d\u2013things which blue state universities (how dare they) subject to rigorous intellectual analysis. And so David Brooks approvingly cites (or distorts\u2013we haven\u2019t read the novel) Tom Wolfe\u2019s description of red state\/blue state moral conflict in his *I am Charlotte Simmons*:<\/p>\n
>His latest, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” is about a young woman who leaves Sparta, a small town in North Carolina, and enters an elite university. She finds all the rules of life there are dissolved: the rules of courtship, the rules of decorum and polite conversation.<\/p>\n
Young Charlotte \u201cfinds *all* the rules of life\u201d to be \u201cdissolved\u201d, and here is the important part, \u201c*there*\u201d. What are the \u201crules of life\u201d? Well, they do not involve honesty, charity, generosity, magnanimity, equanimity, or anything of that sort, rather they involve polite southern belle sexual behavior: the \u201crules\u201d of courtship, decorum, and \u201cpolite\u201d conversation. The \u201cthere\u201d (as in not \u201chere\u201d in deep red Sparta, North Carolina) underscores the Brooksian dichotomy, and, considering the sheer variety of rules of courtship, decorum, and polite conversation, across the red and the blue, it\u2019s a false one.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s more.<\/p>\n
>The social rules have dissolved because the morality that used to undergird them dissolved long ago. Wolfe sprinkles his book with observations about how the word “immoral” now seems obsolete, about how sophisticated people now reject the idea of absolute evil, about a hypermaterialistic neuroscience professor who can use the word “soul” only when it is in quotation marks.<\/p>\n
As academics, we can guarantee you that it doesn\u2019t take a \u201chypermaterialistic neuroscience professor\u201d to be skeptical about the existence or nature of the soul, or a relativist to question the proper use of the word \u201cimmoral,\u201d or a \u201csophisticated\u201d person to wonder about \u201cabsolute evil.\u201d After all, since the first fragmentary origins of Western Thought, philosophers have wondered whether there is such a thing as the soul (distinct from the body, brain or heart), whether there is a knowable basis of morality, and finally, whether absolute evil is conceivable. On this last point, not even St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas thought that absolute evil \u201cexisted.\u201d Since creation was good, they argued, there could not *be* any such thing. Now of course, perhaps there exist unreflective dogmatists who hold such positions. But they are as empty-headed and clueless as their ideological obverse. To pick on them, as Brooks has here done, is to undergird your false dichotomy (here or there) with a straw man. <\/p>\n
Now where we come from, we worry about the erosion of the intellectual and therefore moral virtues that undergird rigorous, critical, honest and fair discourse. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMoral values\u201d played an important role in the recent election, at least in the minds of many conservative pundits and pollsters. To them, red state concern over the erosion of moral values in blue states, universities, and Hollywood delivered a resounding Bush mandate. Despite, or perhaps on account of, such a colossal victory, the red-state … Continue reading There and here<\/span>