Gauging Moral Conservatism

Abstract

This chapter develops and tests bipolar measures of moral conservatism versus moral liberalism, pivotal determinants of moral voting. The four items indicative of moral conservatism form two basic groups, indicators of doctrinal conservatism inspired by religious beliefs (indicated by sentiments about abortion and same-sex marriage), and gun-use conservatism inspired by wanting guns for protection and sport (indicated by sentiments about guns and military interventions). The former taps feelings of threat to one’s moral beliefs and the latter taps feelings of threat to one’s security. A life-paradox index includes the gun-use items and the anti-abortion item. Moral conservatism versus moral liberalism mirrors the polarizations of the culture war—high scores on one concept imply low scores on the other. The four items and their indexes generally have similar (i.e., unitary) relationships with such predetermining variables as religious traditions, religious attendance, and the typology of states. Evangelicals and Catholics tend to be more morally conservative than mainline Protestants and secular people who do not specify their religious tradition. People attending religious services often are more morally conservative than infrequent attenders. The less developed South and Heartland are more morally conservative than the more developed postindustrial and balanced states. The measures of symbolic political ideology and engaged political ideology are less strongly influenced by the categories of religion and the type of state and thus differ from the measures of moral conservatism. Moral conservatives also tend to be economic conservatives, exhibiting negative correlations with views that the economy has serious problems and thus requires governmental interventions. Given the validity of these measures, the subsequent chapters will use them in multilevel, contextual, and graphical models.

By the late 1970s, Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich [both practicing Catholics]—architects of a more conservative Republican Party—were approaching such Protestant Evangelicals as the Reverend Jerry Falwell and helping them to see in the abortion issue a question that could create a pan-Christian movement united against “secular humanism” and for “family values.” By 1980, the Christian Harvest Times was denouncing abortion in its “Special Report on Secular Humanism versus Christianity”: “To understand humanism is to understand women’s liberation, the ERA, gay rights, children’s rights, abortion, sex education, the ‘new’ morality, evolution, values clarification, situational ethics, the loss of patriotism, and many of the other problems that are tearing America apart today.” In this way, a new relationship was emerging among Protestant Evangelicals, the Catholic right-to-life movement, and the ascendant conservatives of the New Right.

—Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel (2012, 259)

In politics, it usually is the case that every action encourages an opposite if not always an equal reaction.

—E.J. Dionne, Jr. (2006, 176)

Where cultural conservatives tend to define freedom economically (as individual economic initiative) and justice socially (as righteous living), progressives tend to define freedom socially (as individual rights) and justice economically (as equity).

—James Davison Hunter (1991, 115)

Notes

• 1. Lipset ([1960] 1981, 509–510). Manza (2012, 174–176) reviews recent research on class-based voting. These studies seldom distinguish between social class and class consciousness.

• 2. Terry Clark and his colleagues study cross-nationally a new socially liberal political culture that may characterize the United States and postindustrial societies. Social class as measured by white collar or blue collar occupations has lost its explanatory power being replaced by a new political culture that supports environmentalism, women’s rights, social equality, post-materialist values, and so forth; see Clark (1994), Clark and Remel (1997), Clark and Hoffmann-Martinot (1998), Clark and Lipset (2001), and Clark (2014). This book supplements Clark’s research by studying moral conservatism in four types of states, class consciousness, and relationships between moral conservatism and authoritarianism.

• 3. Etzioni (1988, 63–64).

• 4. Etzioni (1988, 144–146); Weber (1947) in Parsons (1947, 115).

• 5. Etzioni (1988, 144).

• 6. Etzioni (1988, 90).

• 7. Lakoff (2002).

• 8. Gries (2014, 39) supports Lakoff’s theorizing: mother’s ideology strongly affects a child’s Democratic ideology; father’s ideology strongly affects a child’s Republican ideology.

• 9. Hunter (1991).

• 10. In red-state Kansas opposition to big government (i.e., support for free enterprise) is intertwined with culturally conservative views about abortion (Wuthnow 2012, 279–287).

• 11. Hunter (1994).

• 12. Kahneman (2011) develops a theory of thinking, fast and slow.

• 13. Vavreck (2015).

• 14. Bageant (2007).

• 15. Self-designation as liberal, moderate, or conservative indicates symbolic ideology. Most citizens who are symbolically conservative still favor such liberal programs as social security and Medicare. To distinguish support for liberal programs from symbolic conservatism, Ellis and Stimson (2009; 2012, xiv) introduced the notion of operational ideology ; citizens may be symbolically conservative and operationally liberal. Symbolic ideology when combined with the item about the wrong or right direction of the country indicates operational political ideology.

• 16. This survey assessed positive feelings toward gay marriage. To form the doctrinal conservatism and moral conservatism indexes these feeling scores were reversed.

• 17. Marsden (1991, 125).

• 18. Marsden (1991, 1).

• 19. Ellis and Stimson (2012, 128–131).

• 20. Daniel and McCann (2013, 56–57). Also see Deprez (2013, 53–56).

• 21. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States, led by the now deceased Justice Antonin Scalia , first ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess and carry firearms. The more liberal minority dissented, led by the now retired Justice John Paul Stevens , arguing that the framers of this amendment only meant that law-abiding citizens had a right to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated militia. Wikipedia (2013) offers an informative summary of interpretations of the Second Amendment.

• 22. African-American neighborhoods have high rates of gun-related homicides, sometimes at random. Consequently, the favorable feelings of African Americans on the pro-NRA thermometer are the lowest, 45.8; whereas the favorable feelings for the NRA of whites are the highest, 58.1. The favorable feelings score of Hispanics is 56.8 and that for all others is 54.4.

• 23. Politics and Policy, Bloomberg Businessweek (January 14–January 20, 2013, 26) reports these opinion poll results. With the killing of nine African-American churchgoers June 18, 2015 by a young white supremacist this event could mobilize citizens, the clergy, and politicians to support gun control.

• 24. Twenty-two states have passed state laws allowing people to have guns in their cars when their car is parked in their employer’s parking lot (Murray 2013). These states are in the South and central Heartland and are rare in the coastal and northwestern states. The states with such laws are Alaska, Utah, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Louisiana, Missouri, Minnesota, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Maine. Through a loophole in a federal law, people can now buy silencers for their rifles and machine guns if they form a trust and the trust purchases the silencer. As of April 2013 the total number of registered silencers in American home is 494,452 compared to only 83,627 in 1999. The states with the largest growth in silencers during that period are Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona, Oklahoma, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, and Texas, southern states, and some central Heartland states (Palazzolo 2013).

• 25. Greenhouse and Siegel (2012, 286). Phillips (1969) outlines a Southern Strategy that would mobilize Catholics away from their traditional alignment with the Democratic party; abortion rights were not a salient issue then. Hillygus and Shields (2008, 107–144) explicate the current Republican Southern Strategy. After the 2014 mid-term elections all of the southern states are represented by Republican senators.

• 26. Prior to the late 1970s evangelical Christians did not view abortions as an absolute wrong Greenhouse and Siegel (2012, 258–259):

  In the early 1970s, most Protestant denominations did not share the Catholic Church’s view of abortion. ... Mainline Protestant groups approved of liberalizing access to abortion; some approved repeal, while others endorsed variants of the “reform” position, advocating regulation on the “therapeutic model.”… Even after Roe, in June 1973, Southern Baptist Convention President Owen Cooper criticized the Supreme Court for decisions liberalizing abortion—and banning capital punishment—and then proceeded to observe that the Southern Baptists would support abortions “where it clearly serves the best interests of society.”

  Cooper’s view of abortion was not absolute; a woman and her physician could decide whether to abort a pregnancy. By the 1980s anti-abortion strictness was a test of faith for fundamentalists and the glue that held together the new Catholic–Protestant alliance (Marsden 2006, 243).

• 27. In the Cronbach reliability calculations, the correlation of one of the four items with the construct formed by the three other items suggests that sentiments opposing same-sex marriage are the weakest component. The standardized item-to-construct correlations are: anti-women’s choice = 0.509; anti-gay marriage = 0.410; pro-NRA = 0.523; and Pro-Iraq war = 0.550. The factor loadings from the factor analysis of these four items exhibit a similar pattern: anti-women’s choice = 0.615; anti-gay marriage = 0.483; pro-NRA = 0.668; and Pro-Iraq war = 0.707.

• 28. The reliabilities for the doctrinal and gun-use conservatism indexes are a bit lower than desired. For doctrinal conservatism the standardized alpha (α) = 0.510; it is less than the standardized α = 0.657 for gun-use conservatism. The two component items of the latter are more strongly correlated (r = 0.489) with each other than are the component items (r = 0.342) of the former. The factor loadings of Table 9.1 are generally consistent with Bartels ’s (2008, 88). His factor analysis of issue preferences in 2004 found three factors: economic issues, cultural issues, and security issues. Military intervention loaded on both cultural and security issues. Moral conservatism thus combines cultural issues (e.g., abortion and same-sex marriage) with security issues (e.g., gun ownership and military interventions).

• 29. Lakoff (2002).

• 30. In France the political left supports gay-marriage rights, whereas Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious leaders oppose legalization. Socialist President Francois Hollande promised “marriage for all” and this issue has rallied support for him from the left even though many are dissatisfied with his economic policies (Carney 2013, 2). In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron is thought to support same-sex marriage for political reasons, even at the expense of support from 100 or more fellow conservatives in Parliament. His government is imposing a sustained economic austerity program and he may see his support for same-sex marriage as an economically costless opportunity to broaden his appeal (Ganesh 2013, 9).

• 31. Nixon’s statements are cited by Greenhouse and Siegel (2012, 287).

• 32. Hirschman et al. (1995, 807) provide estimates of Vietnamese deaths. For American dead and wounded see Wikipedia 2012.

• 33. Lakoff ([1996] 2002, 24–27).

• 34. When only the nine explicitly Republican-leaning items are factor analyzed (Method = maximum likelihood), only one factor emerges. The five political items have the highest factor loadings. Pro-gun sentiments load more strongly than the doctrinal conservatism sentiments. Anti-women’s choice has a larger factor loading than anti-gay marriage. The loadings are: Republican Party = 0.856; President Bush = 0.862; John McCain = 0.820; Republicans in Congress = 0.776; Sarah Palin = 0.837; anti-women’s choice = 0.475; anti-gay-marriage rights = 0.427; pro-NRA (gun rights) = 0.556; and pro-Iraq war = 0.710. The variances explained by the factor are: weighted = 13.504; unweighted = 4.671.

• 35. Boudon ([1986] 1989, 58–61) analyzes Pareto’s thoughts on ideology, offering this summary (p. 59): “In other words, behind ideologies (derivations) there are always feelings [residues]. Ideologies themselves are merely a rationalized expression of these feelings.”

• 36. Etzioni (1988, 94).

• 37. Back (1951) found that cohesiveness is a unitary concept: experimenters could manipulate its various dimensions and obtain similar results for social influence.

• 38. During the period of the Vietnam War, J. Howard Pew , an arch conservative and financial supporter, demanded that Evangelicals take pronationalist and pro-capitalist positions (Marsden 1991, 74). These expectations are also consistent with Dionne’s (2006, 183–205) analysis of religion and politics circa the 2004 presidential election.

• 39. Cold feelings about the economy have significant (p < 0.0001) Spearman correlations with the economic indicators in these subsamples thereby underscoring the item’s validity. With viewing the economy as not sound r _s = +0.248; supporting interventions rather than laissez-faire r _s = +0.191; the summary index of serious problems for subsample “a” r _s = +0.341; the summary index of serious problems for subsample “b” r _s = +0.288; and viewing economic inequality as a serious problem r _s = +0.270.

• 40. Hetherington and Weiler (2009, 109–133) analyze how threats can activate authoritarianism, a world view whose determinants and consequences parallel those of moral conservatism.

• 41. Disney and Hughes (2015) report these views of Rev. Schenck.

• 42. The philosopher Sandel (1996, 3) offers this diagnosis.

• 43. Goodstein (2013) summarizes and provides comments on the Pope’s remarks.