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BY JESSE GOTTSCHALK

In print | Published April 23, 2009

Values matter in politics.

Which values matter can be more difficult to analyze.

There are a lot of dimensions along which people place their values. Some are more obvious than others, some are written about more than others. I’d like to talk about one dimension in particular that I believe is subtle, but important.

Let’s start with a thought experiment (right, because Swatties don’t get nearly enough of those).
Two people are tried for the same crime — let’s say stealing the DVD copy of “Norbit” that Barack Obama was about to present as a goodwill gift to Ban Ki-moon (give the President a break, he’s been working too hard at saving the economy, the world and the streets of Gotham to spend time finding more thoughtful gifts to world leaders).

The evidence in the cases appears identical, but only one of the two defendants is guilty.
Throwing aside all constitutional regulations, the judge decides that they must both be found either guilty or innocent.

Thus, one of two things will happen: an innocent person will go to jail, or a person will be let off guilty of committing a serious crime.

The question is this: which one concerns you more?

What if the crime were more serious — a violent act, a sexual offense, a murder?

Of course, almost any of us will be concerned with both sides of the issue — the fairness and protection of freedom with the innocent one, the justice and security of society with the guilty one.
Here’s another question: will people’s responses to this scenario correspond with their political ideology?

(A disclaimer: I am not a sociologist, psychologist, or research statistician. My only empirical evidence on this comes from informal questioning of a very small number of acquaintances, members of both parties. This is clearly more of a thought experiment than any sort of empirical study. If anybody knows of any studies or analyses that are relevant to this, I’d be very interested to hear them; I can be contacted at jgottsc1@swarthmore.edu.)

I believe, and my limited interviews have borne out, that the first of these concerns — fairness and protection of freedoms (which I’ll call “fairness/freedom,” although it clearly includes more than just these concepts) — is more associated with liberal positions, whereas the second (which I’ll simplify by calling “justice/security”) is more associated with conservative positions.

Law and order is the giveaway example. Despite the efforts of Democrats like Bill Clinton, being “tough-on-crime” (justice/security) has long been associated with political conservatism, while liberals have traditionally been more associated with maintaining fairness and protecting the innocent (fairness/freedom).

How about foreign policy? Look at the War in Iraq: conservatives argued that Saddam Hussein posed a threat and needed to be defeated, liberals argued that the moral and actual costs of an unnecessary war outweighed the benefits. True, both sides had different perspectives on whether or not Saddam posed a threat, but most of the public had access to the same information, so objectively the threat should have looked similar to all. Whether people perceived the threat as greater or smaller depended on personal interpretation, analysis and I believe, values.

The evidence for Saddam posing a threat was impressive, but not conclusive. Let’s say, based on the holes in the evidence and the important questions remaining to be asked, that there was a one-in-four chance that the evidence was accurate.

It’s easy to see that, to some people, a one-in-four chance that a threat may exist in the first place could be seen as insufficient to justify war when other options may still have been available. It’s also easy to imagine that other people, with the specter of 9/11 impossible to forget, would consider a one-in-four chance of a greater catastrophe occurring an unacceptable risk, and want to take the most immediate and direct actions. This is a question of erring on the side of avoiding war (fairness/freedom) versus erring on the side of national defense (justice/security).

Let’s take another example. Remember ACORN?

Last year, there was a controversy over forged voter registration applications handed in by employees of this nationwide community organizing coalition. Critics (usually on the right) accused them of grossly violating electoral law and making our voting process more susceptible to fraud. Defenders (usually on the left) argued that this was not a systematic offense by ACORN, but was rather the work of a very small number of employees trying to earn an extra couple bucks by pretending to register voters and collecting extra paychecks for work they didn’t do.

Zooming out, pundits and politicians saw the most sinister of motives on the part of their opponents. Writers on the left accused Republicans of trying to discredit a legitimate urban voter-registration organization, and consequently of trying to disenfranchise large numbers of (likely Democratic) voters. John McCain articulated (to an extreme) the conservative counterpoint at the final presidential debate, and accused ACORN of “one of the greatest frauds in voter history,” and of “maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

However, if we step back and look at the issue through the values framework I’ve been presenting, we see a bit of a different picture: liberals more concerned with ensuring that as many voters as possible are enfranchised, even if some violations of electoral law occur (fairness/freedom); conservatives more concerned with ensuring that laws are respected, even if that leads to lower levels of voter registration (justice/security).

Although this framework can’t be applied to all issues (I’d be hard-pressed, for example, to tell you how it applies to economics), it seems clear to me that on most issues where there is a clear “justice/security” position and an equally clear “fairness/freedom” position, the former is more associated with conservatives, and the latter with liberals. Take immigration. Take drug policy. Take gay marriage (with “justice/security” seen from the perspective of selected religious doctrine). Take practically any issue where some degree of guilt or innocence must be established, but cannot be objectively verified.

And yes, in my very small study sample, these hypotheses have been borne out. Even on the fairly loaded question, “two immigrants are arrested; one is illegal, one is not; would you deport both or neither?” there was a predictable partisan split among my respondents.

So here, briefly, are some of the final questions to be asked.

Q: Does this mean that more sinister motives (e.g. partisan politics with ACORN, xenophobia with immigration) do not exist?

A: Of course not. However, it does mean that we shouldn’t assume they are the case for everyone who possesses contrary opinions.

Q: Where do these values come from?

A: This is where you’d need to ask a psychologist, or a philosopher, or a religious scholar. I have guesses, but little more.

Q: Are these values changeable?

A: Again, I don’t know. But they are flexible enough for facts and details to matter. If the chances of Iraq posing a threat were 95 percent, or 1 percent, you’d probably have had very different crowds of people supporting and opposing the war. Likewise, the number of people affected by ACORN’s registration violations (generally only the people who fund ACORN, who found themselves paying people who cheated on their jobs by falsifying registration forms) was much less than the number of potential voters who were registered to vote by ACORN; if the entire public had been presented with these facts, it’s quite likely the firestorm around ACORN would have been weaker. That many of the facts about the case were not always discussed, however, is not an issue of values — this is likely where we find the blatant practice of partisan politics, promoted by the politicians who publicly passed judgment on ACORN and overlooked the facts.

Q: Why does this matter? I’m going to disagree with people anyway.

A: Understanding more about why people disagree with you does not mean you have to condone them or their value system.

But as I said in my last column, anything that helps us understand the underlying reasons for disagreements gives us more opportunities to find common ground and to engage in civil discourse.

Jesse is a senior. You can reach him at jgottsc1@swarthmore.edu.

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