For Decades, Right-Wingers Have Pushed Paranoia and Xenophobic Politics and Called It ‘Moral Clarity’
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America’s Future. Posted January 28, 2009.
Conservatives live in a world of seething aggression that most progressives can’t even fathom.
As he was prepared to slink off into the history books as arguably the worst president in American history, I actually sat down and watched George W. Bush speak.
There was one passage, in particular, that rang in my ears long after his final goodbye. It probably went over most Americans’ heads — but it went right to the heart of Our Problem With George:
As we address these challenges — and others we cannot foresee tonight — America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.
That phrase “moral clarity” — conservatives use it a lot. And it always sounds absurd to progressive ears, coming as it does from members of an administration that shredded the Constitution, deprived people of due process, committed horrific acts of torture and lied the country into the worst military debacle in its history.
It’s always bewildering to listen to such people lecture the rest of us on “moral clarity.” What in the hell are they talking about?
They keep using those words. It turns out that they don’t mean what we think they mean.
This was brought home to me over the holidays, when I devoured J. Peter Scoblic’s U.S. Vs. Them as part of my vacation reading. Scoblic’s book looks at the way the conservative penchant for “othering” (a word I coined to describe their perpetual need for someone to project their own demons onto, and then hate on) has shaped U.S. foreign policy from the beginning of the Cold War through the Bush administration.
Throughout the book, Scoblic traces the roots of this recurring phrase — “moral clarity” — and discusses the very specific and narrowly defined meaning it has to conservatives.
The phrase first appeared in describing the Manichean worldview of the anti-communist right in the 1950s. To William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, Whittaker Chambers and other National Review writers, “moral clarity” meant fully understanding and accepting the essential good-versus-evil nature of foreign affairs.
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