Values or Principals?

Building on the prior post, let me share a variety of thoughts.

Liberals tend to be humanists, whether they are secular or religious in their humanism. I submit that this is basically a system of values. However, both inside and out of the humanist movement, the term "principals" is probably applied at least as often. Are values and principals really different? Probably not, but the great mass of people, while fully capable of intelligent thought, usually don't spend a lot of time parsing what they hear.

There is a certain emphasis on logic, facts & observation, and thoughtful analysis within the boundaries of humanism. And, as such, it can begin to sound a bit like science - and science cannot (at its core) be about values. Take a car. It is a real physical thing. It has no values, but it can represent values. A Hummer represents self-determination and a lack of concern for the planet and ones fellow humans. A Prius represents a tree-hugger mentality. A police car represents authority. But a car, by itself, has no values.

Science is like that. Good science ignores the values of scientists & society, and instead it observes what is in an untainted fashion. Its findings can be used to promote good values or bad values.

When people describe themselves as being principled, I think that they are saying that they have a strong value system built around being fair to others. One could further refine this definition, but for our purposes it should be adequate.

To a fundamentalists (of any ilk), those who are principled are lacking in values. They subscribe to some secular notions that don't honor the sort of faith or deities that the fundamentalist does.

So too, in American politics, the fundamentalists have hijacked the "values" label. And, we have let them so do. We have let them attack us one issue at a time, set up straw men for each issue, and take the collective of their attacks to prove that we are lacking in values. Personally, I resent this. It bothers me personally that some silly fundamentalist claims that they have higher values than me. And, I think its necessary to challenge them on this point.

Unfortunately, the nature of fundamentalism makes it nearly impossible to have an intelligent discussion one on one with fundamentalists to debate these points. In my experience, the underlying weakness of their values and/or their faith inevitably cause them to verbally or physically leave the debate. This is, in part, because they don't see the value debate occurring at a higher level. Their leadership plays the arguments of values loudly in various national forums. Who, among the humanists,does likewise?

For many years, the fundamentalists were marginalized. There input could be ignored, and as a nation we could focus our discussions on the issues of the day. This is not to suggest some perfect democracy in action - that's a pipe dream anyway. No, democracy will always be dirty, it will always carry baggage, but it can also focus most of its resources on the job at hand. This, I think, it has done through most of the period post-WWII.

Because values were presumed and largely shared, values weren't part of the discussion. [Time out, this obviously over simplifies much of the discussion around civil-rights and Viet-nam - but even here there was little attempt to bring the values discusion to its core] Issues were. And today, we humanists are too often left stammering when someone suggests that we are lacking in values. We have such strong assumptions about inherent commonality of our values that we find it difficult to first establish these values before moving to issues.

This has to stop. First of all, we can't carry a debate when its issues versus values. Second, we can't gain respect of people who are consciously values-oriented if we don't make clear that we are also values-oriented. Third, there are many common values between fundamentalists and humanists. Raising these common values to the fore leads to some obvious contradictions within fundamentalist thought. The latter needn't be pounded into their heads, however. Instead, it should be allowed to fester within them and challenge their thinking.

I was speaking with a fundy friend recently about Iraq. His defense of Bush and our policy was much weaker than before. It came down to asking: "So why did everyone else go along with...." Bush? Clearly, over time, facts can break through fundamentalist thinking.

We need to move the values debate to a national level. We need to re-establish our values. The values upon which this country was based are inherently humanist. They're not capitalist, free-market, hyper-christian, or pre-emptive strike. They are, at their core, respect of each other and of all man-kind. These are hard values to argue against.

Once we have established that we are values-driven, then we will be in a place where we can have a discussion of issues. And, if we follow this course, IMHO we are likely to win most of the debates on the issues.