Moralism without morality

Patrick J. Deneen, Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown, writing at his blog: “The discomfort with urging truly moral consequences that one would expect to accompany the language of moral condemnation is most often lacking because the Left has come to define itself as the ‘Party of Progress,’ in opposition to the ‘Party of Memory’ (or, ‘Tradition’), to use Emerson’s language. Morality is problematic because, more often than not, it forestalls those ‘experiments in living’ that were praised and recommended by John Stuart Mill . . . As D.C. councilman David Catania was quoted to say in the wake of the Council’s vote to legalize gay marriage, the ‘other side’ (i.e. conservatives) are wrong because they are ‘tethered to the past.’ To be tethered – restrained – is a sign of being on the ‘wrong side of history.’”

Deneen’s post is a response to Katherine Marshall’s at The Washington Post’s Georgetown/On Faith blog: Greed (not America) gets the blame