One of the best lessons I’ve learned over the past 15 years in Washington, D.C., is that you shouldn’t bring an economic argument to a moral debate. A corollary to that lesson, one that I understood but hadn’t been able to voice with clarity until recently, is that the first person to lose the moral high ground loses the moral debate.
Given the leading stories of the year so far — including all the surefire clickbait on wild racism, political advocacy gone awry, and fake news — it seems as though 2018 is shaping up to be the year of the lost moral high ground.
For instance, Roseanne Barr was on a roll. She surprised everyone by not just rebooting her 30-year-old show but by slaughtering in the ratings. She gave a voice to supporters of President Trump who are more accustomed to being on the receiving end of wannabe-Jon Stewart, point-and-laugh, left-wing comedy. She wasn’t necessarily fighting for Trump, but she was fighting for the restoration of dialogue. She was winning because she had the moral high ground. It didn’t last.
[Salena Zito: The road back to civility]
Last month Roseanne set what is likely a record for the fastest fall from grace — and that fall was justified. She tweeted the kind of nasty, racist joke the Internet had been waiting for her to make. Her writers quit, her show was canceled, and her moral victories were wiped away. She handed a win to those enemies who were rooting for her to fail. She gave the point-and-laugh, left-wing comedians the very thing she’d taken from them: credibility.
But it isn’t just individuals who are sacrificing their moral high ground. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, keeps getting caught in lie after lie. PETA has done good work, such as exposing bad farm conditions — although it’s fairly easy to take the moral high ground with sad pictures of bunnies. But their continued attempts at attacking PetSmart keep undermining their mission, and that’s because they keep getting caught making up attacks. And lying doesn’t exactly fit within the bounds of “ethical” conduct.
Penn and Teller did an amazing expose on PETA back in 2001, so this isn’t new. Stretching the truth is one thing, but now PETA is just outright lying about PetSmart in their quest for a corporate bogeyman. As Derek Hunter points out, PETA recently claimed some PetSmart employees had been charged with felonies, but one local Fox affiliate eventually had to delete PETA’s statement altogether, writing: “This story has been updated to note the charges against the store employees are misdemeanors, and a statement from PETA included in an earlier version of this story has been removed.” (*Cough* — fake news — *cough.*)
I mean, I understand the fight. PETA is trying to save animals. But sacrificing the moral high ground for a quick win won’t help them help animals in the long term.
And now we come to the media. They are convinced Democrats will win big in the midterm elections this fall, predicting the so-called “blue wave.” But these predictions are coming from a press that continues to push outside of the facts.
The problem for so many in the press is that if they were just to act as boring, traditional journalists, and report stories as they are (maintaining the moral high ground), then the stories dogging the White House and the GOP would likely have an outsize effect on the midterms, driving big wins for Left. But when the media continues pushing “fake news,” sacrificing the moral high ground, those stories lose their effect.
Jared Whitley, a good friend of mine, recently explained in the Hill why he doesn’t believe that “blue tidal wave” is coming at all. And, while I agree with him, I would have added that the media’s relentless, irrefutable bias will also hurt the Left in the midterms. They’re so ideological that their criticisms are increasingly falling on deaf ears with the Roseanne-watching crowd.
The point of all of these examples is to say that just making the moral argument isn’t enough.
As British thinker Stephen Fry recently said in his much-publicized debate with Dr. Jordan Peterson, “One of the greatest human failings is to prefer to be right rather than effective.” If a debate is made on moral grounds, then actions count. You can’t be effective if your bad behavior justifies your enemies’ criticisms, whether you’re Roseanne, PETA, or the press.
That’s good advice for everyone who claims the moral high ground. It has to be earned, and once it’s earned it has to be kept.
Charles Sauer (@CharlesSauer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of the Market Institute and previously worked on Capitol Hill, for a governor, and for an academic think tank.
