The Moral Vote
In America, the moral vote at the last election seemed to go to the Republican Party – and it gave the election to Bush. While I would take issue with the Republican Party being the moral party (sure, you don’t like abortion; what about Guantanamo Bay?), here it’s even less clear-cut. Traditionally the Conservatives have been morally conservative (in other words, the “moral” party). What’s the situation like today – and how should Christian voters go about deciding who to vote for if morals are important in their decisions? I’ve listed some of the major moral issues and written about the main three party’s stands on them.
Social Justice
By social justice I mean providing for those who aren’t as well off. Labour are traditionall the party of social justice, and over the past eight years have done a pretty good job of continuing that reputation. They’ve gone about it in a complicated way though, and while I believe they have done many good things in this area, I can’t name one that I understood at the time. They’ve managed to ignore the problems with pensions however. The Conservatives say they’ll do more about pensions, but as a party their reputation isn’t brilliant. Their plans to pay for private operations with NHS money are claimed to have the poorest at heart, but ideologically (and very probably practically as well) the idea is definitely not socially just. The Lib Dems say they can fund a greater state pension than both the Tories and Labour, and social justice is one of the major prongs of their party (the other being libertarianism to an extent). All in all, the Lib Dems come out on top if they can provide what they say they can. The Conservatives come last.
Economy/Wealth Redistribution
The Lib Dems believe in fair taxation – a Robin Hood style taking from the rich and giving to the poor, only legal. The Conservatives believe in lower taxes to improve the economy, with the wealth made at the top trickling down to those in need at the bottom. In practise, this only works when you have benevolent rich people and businesses, and they’re all too rare. (It used to work, but doesn’t now.) Labour are pretty good, but less extreme than the Lib Dems when it comes to higher taxation. Both Lib Dems and Labour score highly in this area, and it becomes a matter of opinion whether the higher rates of tax (50% income tax over £100,000 p.a. and higher local taxes for earners over £40,000 p.a.) seems fair to you.
The War in Iraq
It has to be mentioned for two reasons. I believe the war to be immoral, and both the Conservatives and Labour supported it (as a whole). People differ on this issue though. The other issue here is Tony Blair and others around him. Did they deceive the country or didn’t they? If they did, they lose marks on morality. Another memo was leaked today, saying that long before the decision was made to go to war, Jack Straw and others were trying to engineer a situation where war would be more politically favourable (with no regard for the legality).
Immigration and Asylum
I’m biased here, but I think the Tory policies in this area are thinly masked racism. Still, having a limit on asylum seekers still seems immoral (they are asylum seekers after all). Labour may have mismanaged the whole system and it may need reform, but that’s not a moral issue. The moral issue is the cap being proposed by the Tories. More marks lost for them, then.
Campaign Styles
Following on from that, the Tories seem to be playing on people’s fears about immigration to get votes under the guise of “not being hindered by political correctness” and “talking about issues that matter to voters”. Politicians always slag one another off though, so we could possibly give Lib Dem positive marks for their “positive campaigning”, but apart from that there’s not much difference. (The Greens get bonus marks for not travelling by helicopter though.)
Abortion
The Conservatives want the age of viability reduced (good for morals) but only after an investigation into it. The Lib Dems offer MPs a free vote, and I’m not sure about Labour. Pretty much equal though.
Homosexuality
Is it immoral to stop homosexuals from marrying, or is it immoral to let them? It doesn’t matter because all the parties want gay marriage anyway.
The Environment
Labour talk the talk but so far haven’t done much about carbon emissions (and want to renew the nuclear deterrent, as well as possibly build new nuclear plants). Lib Dems are very green, much more so than the Tories and have more progressive targets than Labour (who are still on track to meet them, just about). Tories lose again, with Lib Dems quite a long way ahead because Tony Blair doesn’t seem to care any more.
Overall
Well, it’s completely subjective of course, but on the traditional moral issues (abortion, homosexuality) the parties don’t have much to chose between them. On less traditional moral issues (the environment, war and social justice) the Lib Dems come out on top, with Labour doing pretty well in most areas with a few exceptions. Still, it seems to set to rest the idea that the Conservatives are the moral vote – in fact, I’d argue that voting Conservative would be immoral (see immigration and wealth distribution for examples of why).
I was talking to my former youth leader, Rob, about this on Sunday, and he was quite surprised to hear what I said about the Lib Dems’ moral issues (especially as our local Lib Dem MP has a reputation for being pro everything Christians aren’t). A lot of people also don’t realise that less obvious policies have moral implications (for example, taxes). I hope this has been helpful to people in thinking about these issues. Of course, with tactical voting the moral vote might be Conservative (to keep out UKIP) or Labour (because the candidate was anti-war) or Lib Dem (because they’d vote to lower the viability age) or Green (because you live in the centre of Brighton) or UKIP (because it’s them or the BNP) – you never know. That’s one reason I’m voting Lib Dem – proportional representation means that votes outside a few marginal constituancies actually mean something, giving us a better democracy – and a better democracy, I’d argue, is morally prefereable.
Matthew @ 19:14, May 3, 2005 to Politics | Comments (23)
Comments:
Mr E
Labour’s campaign hasn’t been particularly positive either. In fact, even the Lib Dems have done a bit of “Tony Blair is rubbish”, although their campaign has probably been more positive than the others. Not by a lot though.
Comment added at 12:42, May 4, 2005
Matthew
The Lib Dems are putting an emphasis on trust in their campaign, but their policies have been positive ones rather than the negative campaign of the Tories. Contrast “keep the immigrants out!” with “let’s have an independent organisation to deal with immigration”.
I suddenly realised this morning that I’d forgotten anything to do with law and order and drugs. Quick sum-up: Lib Dems want shorter and fewer prison sentences with possession of drugs not ending in prison sentences. The Tories want the opposite. Labour are in the middle. I think the Lib Dems’ ideas are closer to the moral society outlined in the New Testament – and they certainly wouldn’t be letting people who are a danger to others out on the streets, which some people seem to think they would.
Comment added at 14:36, May 4, 2005
Mr E
The Lib Dems think that prisoners should be allowed to vote. I’m not sure they should.
I’m sure that Michael Howard doesn’t think his immigration policies, for example, are negative. He just realises that the system is out of control and he thinks that the best way to sort it out is to impose limits on numbers of asylum seekers, which I don’t necessarily agree with.
Basically, what I’m saying is, try not to be so dismissive of policies which you don’t agree with. I know you’re generally pretty rational, but the Tories aren’t trying to be negative or racist (“It’s not racist to impose limits on asylum seekers…”, apparently).
Comment added at 20:50, May 4, 2005
Sheepie
They say they aren’t trying to be negative or racist…
Comment added at 17:42, May 5, 2005
Matthew
And they may well be trying not to be negative and racist. I’d argue that they’re failing though ;-)
The giving-prisoners-the-vote thing is interesting – I’d have to see what reasons the Lib Dems give for that. However, Charles Kennedy said in an interview it wasn’t one of the important issues and probably wouldn’t be passed as law for ages, if at all, under a Lib Dem government. It’s a policy of theirs, but there are others that would take priority.
Comment added at 17:50, May 5, 2005
Mr E
I was going to say that racism is usually pretty conscious, but I’m not sure it is actually.
What constitutes a negative policy anyway? Surely it’s pretty subjective. “Keep the immigrants out!” is an exaggeration, at least if you’re referring to the Tories (perhaps the BNP actually do phrase it like that). It could be viewed in a more positive “We want to give more jobs to our own citizens” way.
By the way, how do I get italics &c.?
Comment added at 20:49, May 5, 2005
Matthew
Jonny, Jonny, Jonny. Do you actually read the text below “Post a comment”? It says XHTML auto-generated by Markdown, which gives a link to the Markdown project page. On this page you will find information about Markdown syntax, and how to add italics etc. to your post.
Yes, negative policies are subjective, but negative campaigning is less so. One Tory candidate had this phrase on his election leaflet (regarding immigration): “What part of ‘send them back!’ don’t you understand, Mr Blair?” Pretty negative really…
And the Conservatives (and Labour) don’t let asylum seekers work anyway, so it’s not like they can take other people’s jobs.
Comment added at 08:48, May 6, 2005
Mr E
A lovely biased Telegraph quote:
“[Michael Howard] fought by far the most disciplined and professional campaign of the three major parties.”
I should mention, though, that this article was written by Francis Maude and Stephen Dorrell, “two influential Tory modernisers”, who are, as far as I know, not regular Telegraph writers.
Comment added at 16:13, May 8, 2005
Matthew
Why the emphasis on Telegraph, Jonny? You want a <cite> tag.
Comment added at 17:33, May 9, 2005
Matthew
Oh, oops, I’ve disallowed them. I should probably allow some HTML tags. Anyway, you shouldn’t use the asterisks to provide italics, only emphasis.
Comment added at 17:37, May 9, 2005
Mr E
What’s the difference between emphasis and italics in HTML?
I italicised Telegraph as it is the name of a publication. One often sees this.
Comment added at 21:50, May 9, 2005
Matthew
No, you emphasised Telegraph. The tag to use if you’re quoting the name of a publication/film/book etc. is the <cite> tag, which unfortunately it’s not possible to use without me specifically listing every single HTML tag I don’t want people to be able to use (tables, divs, links etc.) which I haven’t got round to yet.
The difference between emphasis and italics in HTML is that italics are a presentational attribute that should have nothing to do with a structured markup language (as is HTML). The inclusion of the <i> tag was a concession by the W3C before stylesheets had been invented. It’s now obsolete and would break this page due to it being invalid markup.
Remember that correct HTML is necessary for accessibility reasons (as well as rendering reasons, but that’s more complicated) and using an <em> tag (as you did) when you don’t mean emphasis is incorrect. It results in a screen reader reading out “Telegraph” in an emphasised voice, and potentially gives partially sighted readers the word “Telegraph” in whatever font weight or colour they’ve specified for <em> tags because italics aren’t clear enough.
Comment added at 17:50, May 10, 2005
Matthew
Right, the tags should hopefully work now, so I can post <cite> tags just by using back-ticks (or any other tags for that matter. Will it work, I wonder?
Edit: Okay, it appears it doesn’t like <code> tags and messes up the rendering. How odd.
Edit 2: Okay, I can’t enable some HTML without disabling Markdown – they don’t want to work together. (It’s not the <code> tags incidently, but enabling HTML means <p> tags have to be manually entered.) Slightly irritating. Maybe there’s a way round it, but it seems we can’t have both. *goes to have a play with the templates*
Edit 3: Nope, no joy – the HTML-sanitize process runs after the Markdown process, meaning that to stop normal users creating some tags would stop Markdown working. Back on topic, now.
Comment added at 18:07, May 10, 2005
Mr E
How many options are there for getting italicised text, , , what else? Should be used in every situation that isn’t citing a publication?
Comment added at 22:28, May 11, 2005
Matthew
You need to use < and &rt; entities to create HTML tags.
The italics is irrelevant to the tags, it entirely depends on the stylesheet how they are displayed. You can override my stylesheet if you so desire (and are using a good browser). Have a look in the stylesheet (you may want to get rid of the “lite” bit to see the normal one) to see what I’ve chosen to italicise.
Comment added at 13:16, May 12, 2005
Mr E
OK, if I was to cite a publication such as The Daily Telegraph I use <cite> . If I want to emphasise what I’m saying I use <em> . What about other situations? Maybe a translation of something, or a foreign word or phrase like “raison d’être” (these are often seen italicised). What do I use then?
Comment added at 15:25, May 12, 2005
Mr E
I don’t understand this. The Markdown page says I can use <cite> tags wherever I like, but they’re not working here. The only way I seem to be able to get italics in a comment is by using emphasis, which you object to for a citation. Please explain.
Comment added at 15:32, May 12, 2005
Matthew
You’re thinking about it the wrong way. You shouldn’t think about which tag you use to get a particular visual effect, you should think about which tag you use because it’s designed for that usage – and the stylesheet should give the required visual effect. Better use no tag than a wrong tag.
The Markdown page is saying that Markdown itself doesn’t strip out HTML tags; Movable Type, on the other hand, does strip out HTML. I can’t get around that without disabling Markdown. It’s a limitation of the Movable Type system.
Comment added at 16:11, May 12, 2005
Matthew
As for the different languages, you should technically use a span tag with a lang=”fr” attribute, probably. I haven’t set up the stylesheet though, so don’t worry about it being italicised or not. The Web is not an ideal medium in which to use standard typesetting, because it’s designed for everyone to read (including machines) whereas anything that is typeset is by default for a smaller audience (people who can see, generally). With the Web, different people on different devices are accessing the same content, so markup is key and presentation secondary.
Comment added at 16:16, May 12, 2005
Mr E
I thought it was clear from my posts about when to use each tag that I am thinking about which tag I should use in particular situations.
How do I get a %lt;cite> tag here, so that I can write “The Daily Telegraph” in italics correctly?
Comment added at 19:53, May 12, 2005
Matthew
You don’t. And no, it wasn’t clear, because in your last post you said I “object(ed) to (<em>s) for a citation. Please explain.” It seemed like you were asking me to explain why I didn’t want you to use <em>s for a citation. Sorry if I misunderstood.
Comment added at 22:03, May 12, 2005
Mr E
Then what am I supposed to do when I want to cite something. Am I allowed to just use emphasis, as there is not way of getting a <cite> tag? e.g. A Brief History of Time.
Comment added at 23:02, May 12, 2005
Matthew
No. Leave out any tag. As I said, better no tag than a wrong one (and there are many reasons for that, which I’ve explained some of).
Comment added at 20:55, May 14, 2005
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