Matthew Yglesias makes a great point that is often overlooked in the “family values” debate: protecting the institution of the family is a valuable and legitimate goal of government. He writes:

It’s genuinely the case that we have a lot of social problems that are complicated by family instability — children are expensive and time-consuming and tend to be much better off if both parents are involved in bringing them up. So the idea that marriage and family life could, in some sense, use some shoring-up isn’t a crazy one. But conservatives don’t seem to have many actual ideas about doing this apart from blaming the gays. But I think serious social conservative ideas on this front would be welcome.

This observation is an example of the Third Way approach to politics because Matthew is saying that sound policy should affirm values that other political thinkers see as antithetical: not allowing anti-gay discriminationi and not allowing cultural decline to unravel the institutions of marriage and family.

What’s missing to make this a Fourth Way approach is to identify that the seemingly conflicting values arise from concerns at at least three distinct levels of social evolution. Protecting existing social institutions is a top priority of tradition-minded thinkers (amber altitude), defending the individual liberty of gays is a top priority of liberals (orange), and affirming a more inclusive understanding of the family is a top priority of multicultural-minded thinkers (green altitude). Matthew’s analysis would be strengthened by acknowledging that the goal of politics is to balance these values and not allowing any one set of values to establish a “dominator hierarchy” over other legitimate values.

Technorati Tags: family, Fourth Way, Gay, marriage

Sociology professor Frank Furedi’s “Barack Obama and the politicisation of lifestyle” makes the case that it’s the politicization of lifestyles, not reasoned debate based on principles, that governs America’s politics. Here’s one important paragraph:

A columnist for The Village Voice wrote of the ‘monumental apathy and programmed ignorance of at least half the American public’. A leading liberal writer argued that Americans were voting in a ‘fog of fear’, and thus they could not be trusted to think about ‘real politics’ in a serious manner. Apparently, thanks to President Bush’s ‘unremitting fearmongering’, ‘millions of voters are reacting not with their linear and logical left brain, but with their lizard brain and their more emotional right brain… It’s not about left wing vs right wing; it’s about left brain vs right brain.’

I love the lizard brain v. logical brain angle on politics, because it captures the distinction between attitudes derived from pre-formal stages of cognition v. formal stages. What the liberal writer thinks of as differences in psychological styles and reactions, and Furedi thinks of differences owing to the politicization of identity, Fourth Way politics says are differences owing to distinctions of consciousness/altitude represented by voters’ measurement at the egocentric or ethnocentric (magenta, amber, and red) v. worldcentric (orange and higher) values mode/line of moral development.

Furedi is obviously preturbed by the psychologization of politics, though his prescription for overcoming our differences is rather measured. He continues:

Of course, once an individual’s identity and political outlook become entwined, then debate becomes highly charged – and highly personal. Arguments come to represent a statement about the self. When public issues are taken so personally, political dialogue becomes deeply confusing. It is always difficult to respond in a cool and detached manner to what we perceive to be an insult. When people endow their lifestyles with moral meaning, even relatively minor differences with others can acquire monumental significance. Often, people use statements such as ‘they are not like us’ to affirm their own identity. Criticising other people’s consumption of junk food or adherence to religious values is a way of making a statement about the self; those who advocate different kinds of behaviour and different values come to be seen as a threat to one’s own identity….

Of course, identity does play an important role in public life. But people’s identity is far from fixed; certainly the simplistic association of parenting style with political affiliation overlooks the fluid, unpredictable manner in which people engage with public issues. If identity has become an important factor in voting behaviour today, then it has less to do with people’s ‘father figures’ than with the politicisation of lifestyles. At a time when there is very little to separate the presidential candidates, politicians have sought to politicise people’s personal lives. Today, most of the wedge issues that divide the American electorate – guns, same-sex marriage, abortion, school prayer – directly impinge on individuals’ identities. When issues become personal, debate becomes polarised. This process looks likely to entrench the sense of social fragmentation rather than alleviate it….

Obama’s victory in the Democratic nomination process reveals that much has changed in America. The old-fashioned politics of race is far less important than it was in the past – but it is being replaced by a new, individuated, culture-based divide between different sections of American society.

In short, Furedi seems to want politicians to pay less attention to values and identities and instead engage Americans in reasoned debate. It’s worth granting Furedi that political observers should balance any temptation towards a rigid and deterministic psychologizing with an awareness of “the fluid, unpredictable manner in which people engage with public issues”. However, as Rod Dreher notes, his argument is somewhat weakened by its failure to look at how it’s not just persons of the blue-state persuasion who vote their identities.

Interestingly, despite mentioning Obama in the title of his article, Furedi fails to make a point that seems obvious to me. Voters in America may be voting with their identities and values more than ever, but Obama stands out among our politicians for attempting valiantly to resist a demeaning and divisive political style.

In contrast to his some of his partisan supporters who often feel that every political issue incites passion and excitement, Obama himself maintains a refreshingly calm and tempered presence whose sense of identity seems secure and well-integrated. Make no mistake, in an America divided by politicized identities and psychological politics, leaders like Obama are needed more than ever.

Technorati Tags: Fourth Way, Furedi, Obama, politics, psychology