Commentary:

Moral values determined the election? Whose?

It's been making the rounds in both the mainstream media and on weblogs how many polls show that people voted based upon their "moral values" and how this is indicative of some fundamental shift in attitudes.

Let's take a step back for a moment, shall we?

If asked "Do you consider the moral values of the President important" or "Did you vote based upon what you felt are the moral values of the candidates" I can guarantee you that not only fundamentalist Christians or radical right-wingers will answer in the affirmative, but almost ANY thinking person will answer "yes", left-wing, right-wing, centrist, even nutjobs and moonbats, neither of whom spend too much time thinking.

Well, duh!!!!

I would answer "yes" to either of those questions, and my answer would have meant something completely different than a "yes" answer from anyone else, even someone who shares many of what I consider to be my moral values. Unless the question defined what the "moral values" were, all that question really meant was "do you want the person in charge to share your views on the world?".

Well, duh!!!!

Of course people will answer "yes".

As was made clear in the run up to election day, and even more so in the polls ON election day, polls need careful analysis, and are often misleading if not completely wrong. It is very muddy and lazy thinking to say there is some fundamental shift in the United States based upon this polling result. Many of the people I have communicated with who said they voted for Bush made it clear they are in general NOT happy with many of his domestic policies. To me, the most radical change we are now observing is that for the first time since the 1950s, foreign policy dominated the thoughts of most of the electorate rather than "it's the economy, stupid." This is a mixed blessing, because foreign policy will become even more important as the global economy becomes more developed and more interconnected, but the downside is that most Americans have no idea how people in other parts of the United States think, much less some ferriner who don't speak English like a civilized person should (yes, I'm exaggerating here, but not by much from what I read on many weblogs).

The United States is unique in the world in many ways, and unfortunately this affects how people in the United States think about the rest of the world. The old Native American saying applies, do not judge a man until you walk a mile in his moccasins. The citizens of the United States live in the land of milk and honey described in the Old Testament of the Christian Holy Bible, but they do not realize their great good fortune. Ninety percent of the population of the planet does not live in that luxury, and a significant fraction live in conditions that most citizens of the United States would equate with "Hellish". With this fundamental difference, I fear that the understanding necessary for those who are currently both powerful and wealthy (which is pretty much everyone in the United States, why do you think so many people from other countries want to come to the US???) to be able to relate to the rest of the world will be lacking, and this will result in an even bigger chasm between the US and the rest of the world than the one that has developed in the past three years.

This chasm is important, and the wider it grows, the grimmer the future of the United States becomes. Contrary to what many think, the United States needs the rest of the world. For a simple but remarkably effective proof, go to Wal-Mart and try to buy $100 worth of goods that you actually need, and buy only things made 100% in the United States. There is more than just trade, but this is the most obvious way in which we are now truly dependent upon the rest of the world for what we regard as necessities.

Back to "moral values" though. It is built into the Constitution of the United States that moral values as embodied in religion should not be imposed by government. There are remarkably few things that are universally regarded as non-religious moral values. Even the death penalty for heinous crimes is not a universal moral value. Whose morals do we pick? In what is the most religious "liberal democracy" on Earth, and could reasonably be labeled a Christian nation, there are more Christian denominations than there are political parties or even brands of ketchup (to take a page from the recent boycotts of some folks not wanting to even indirectly support one who doesn't share their political views). In this environment, what does the phrase "moral values" really mean?