<Rush Limbaugh knows what is good for everyone, he has it on the best of authority. He has not only the supreme authority of God, but claims to have a letter from God. The conservative, based upon his source of authority, feels in a position to dictate the good to his fellow citizens and to pass legislation making sure they abide by a conservative sense of good.

The poor liberal has only his authority as an individual to choose the good for him. He is in no position to say what is good for others. The liberal recognizes he has enough trouble being true to himself.



An interesting take on it. Doubt you listen to Rush much--I'm sure others have told you all about him. Another way of putting it is that a conservative believes that there are objective moral standards, and a liberal decides for himself what is right and wrong depending on....depending on what? If he believes that there are no objective standards either from a supreme supernatural authority (religious) or derivable from human nature and facts of reality (Objectivist/libertarian), then how does he decide what's right and wrong? Almost anything can be eventually justified if the ultimate authority is inside your own head, separate from external observation of objective reality.

I subscribe to the Objectivist/libertarian theories of morality, but that's just me. Most religious people tend to have very reliable moral codes, largely absorbed from centuries of history and experience, but now and then someone will decide he has a "direct line" to God and go off in rather unpleasant directions (Inquisition, and any number of cultists). Again, when the ultimate authority on reality is the voice between your ears, anything goes.

On the other end of the spectrum, the moral record this century of atheist socialism speaks for itself (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and others. Eighty million victims so far.) There is a not-inconsiderable record of these types "dictating the good to their fellow citizens" too. Not that this has anything at all to do with liberals, right?

Absent a specific source, I think most people derive their moral codes by unconciously absorbing them from their environment, their parents, their religious upbringing (if any), the society around them, and peer groups. Fortunately for us all, this usually results in a fairly decent person. Still, without that objective baseline, such people are also easily steered in other directions by those who feel--rightly or wrongly--that they have more certainty about these things.