Culture

Answer to Gore's Loss in Morality

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Matt Friedeman
Contributing Columnist
January 27, 2001

According to a new study by the Democrats, Al Gore lost the election because he ran a campaign on old-fashioned populism and was lackluster on the stump.

Well, maybe. But here's hoping that the Dems didn't spend too much on their study. Because something else at the bottom of the American psyche prompted the loss that should have been a runaway victory for the vice-president.

In The Chronicle of Higher Education a few years ago Kay Haugaard, who teaches creative writing at Pasadena City College, described a shift in her students' reaction to "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. "The Lottery" is, of course, the short story about a town that annually stones to death one citizen who wins - or loses, as the case may be - that year's lottery.

Things have changed over the twenty years Haugaard has used the story.

Once students got angry and upset over such an immoral practice as fictitiously penned by Jackson. No more. Now students think, says Haugaard, that they are in no position to judge people who follow different traditions.

Says the teacher: "At this point I gave up. No one in the whole class of more than twenty ostensibly intelligent individuals would go out on a limb and take a stand against human sacrifice."

In the same issue of the (ital. Chronicle) Robert Simon, a professor of philosophy at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, wrote of his dismay at the moral relativism of contemporary students.

"I have yet to meet even one student who has expressed doubts about whether the Holocaust actually happened. However, I have recently seen an increasing number of students who, although well-meaning, hold almost as troubling a view. They accept the reality of the Holocaust, but they believe themselves unable morally to condemn it, or indeed to make any moral judgments whatsoever."

In other words, while affirming that the Holocaust was a great evil, these students at the same time want to suspend moral judgment. Hence, says Simon, they lose the ability to condemn wrongdoing anywhere. Evil can, and will be inflicted, because those who would impose the evil "need not fear moral censure no matter what evil they choose to inflict on us all."

Some people will think it's a stretch to link the campaign of Al Gore to the disintegration of moral absolutes in this country, but I don't think so.

Here's the argument - the moral state of the nation is in decline but Americans still have the wherewithal to recognize that fact. And enough still see it as alarming.

Al Gore couldn't squeak out a victory even as part of a team whose president boasted an overwhelming approval rating and an eight-year economy boom. In their heart of hearts, a greater proportion of America's states went Bush because people just couldn't convince themselves that Mr. Gore's moral core reflected anything close to the best of the American spirit.

Eight years of moral fecklessness in the Oval Office was enough. Four to eight more might cause egregious harm.

And for that reason, Democrats, the opposing party is in charge.