Traditions that have survived into the present day have obvious value as underpinning a durable social order (traditionalist perspective).
Yet their survival may be due to their success at oppressing the weak and expanding through imperial conquest (evolutionary/historical perspectives).
Further, a notable set of expansive traditional cultures may owe their remarkable success to their ability to draw in peoples beyond their original culture, proselytic faiths like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism or societies open to diverse cultures, like the Roman republic, the UK and the US.
And some of these may owe their success to their nearer approach to a genuinely human culture and morality, fit for moral agents able to recognize their best selves in other moral agents (universalistic perspective).
However, there will always be arbitrary cultural quirks, both graces and defects.
Traditions, Power & Causality
Traditions, that is, patterns of behavior shared within groups, arise within cultures, which accustom their members to them and transmit them across generations.
Cultures are thus the wombs and nests of traditions.
Birth culture, like youth culture, local culture, sectarian culture and partisan culture, are forms of pack morality entrenched by peer pressure within the groups that give rise to them. Snubbing, gossip, and hazing are among the lighter means of enforcement, which can escalate to shunning, imprisoning, banishing or executing
and while some of this can be seen as necessary measures for the order and safety of societies, some always enforces the advantages of inner circles of society over outer circles, and some secures the power of the innermost circle of society over the rest.
That innermost circle can be narrow, restricted to one dictator and his cronies, or wide, extended the whole resident populace, at least adults with legal residence and not exclusively citizens of another state.
Those who hold sovereign power, or who form the power base of those who do, are free to turn a blind eye to misdeeds of the group as a whole against other groups or the law of the land, and they often do, more often and savagely the narrower the circle in which power resides or looks for support.
This is essentially a causal law of politics, for the meaning of sovereign power is that there is no earthly power above that power to call it to account.
We can formulate this as follows:
The 1st Law of Political Causality: The sovereign power serves its own interests, i.e., the national interest,
Corollary A: Because it does so, the demographic constitution of the sovereign power will determine what interests are served.
Corollary A is the core of the political theory called pluralism.
Corollary B: It follows from Corollary A that common national interest that can only emerge from unavoidable friction between partial interests within a state is that which can be shepherded through a political process characterized by the separation of powers into defined and limited offices empowered to check and balance one another.
Corollary B is the theory of government variously called republicanism, liberal democracy and the open society, characterized by separation of powers, checks and balances, broad franchise and periodic free elections. Its ancient equivalent was called mixed government by Aristotle.
Corollary C: Because a sovereign power serves its own interests, the strategic competitive situation of the sovereign power will determine its geopolitical stances.
Corollary C is the core of the theory of international relations called realism.
What Then Is the Role of Morality in the Politics of Interest?
The general tendency of human nature is for every perspective to conflate its own perspective with truth, and for every interest to conflate its interest with the common good.
Morality is both possible and real, but since each of us, in our own conscience is our own judge, we are always inclined to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt — if we have the self-awareness to entertain doubts at all.
To doubt oneself and one’s most habitual inborn and encultured perspectives is hard work. And it doesn’t pay well. Realistically, most of us go into other lines of work.
One needs both a disposition towards fairness and an openness toward others — and not just the ones who seem most like us.
And extensive training, with a poor rate of return on the time, opportunity cost, and money invested, in economic terms — and if you want to support yourself and provide for a family.
Traps and pitfalls abound.
It is far easier to fall in line with some network of people whose thinking reinforces one another than to maintain absolute independence and integrity.
“Many are called, but few are chosen”, as Christians say, falling short of their calling about as often as anyone else.
Sometimes, especially these days on the hard right, “morality” seems to mean their own economic and cultural interest.
Sometimes, especially these days on the progressive left, “morality” seems to mean grand gestures and posturing on deliberately out-of-the-mainstream pet causes.
And both wings are frenetically virtue-signaling their purity to their demographic and ideological bases.
Realistic Politics means Checking & Balancing Partisan Interests Posing as Moral Causes
Healthier national cultures balance out these abrasive partisan elements.
Less healthy ones fan the flames of partisanship, leading to the capture of government by the stronger or more ruthless party.
In states with weak or non-existent histories of democracy, sovereignty is stolen at gunpoint.
In states with longer democratic pedigrees, the long con is the better route. If citizens let their attention wander, political and cultural polarization forces them to choose sides they wouldn’t even consider in better times.
Extremists fuel polarization because a strong center and a faith in the constitution and norms of democracy keep them out of power, confident they’ll outmaneuver the other extreme when the decisive struggle comes.
Their first steps are never audacious grabs at power.
They need the trust of the unsuspecting, until they have concentrated enough power in themselves to do without it at the decisive moments.
It’s like Machiavelli said, in politics only armed prophets succeed, because when the people stop believing they must be made to believe (The Prince, Chap. 6).
Demagogues begin by constantly belittling every norm, every consensual procedure, for norms and consensual procedures are constraints on the behavior of the powerful.
They make baseless claims about elections, sow distrust in every form of expertise and every standard of credibility.
The law of the land, and civilization generally, may be, to a degree, lipstick on a pig.
But if the pig is accustomed to more lawful behavior and a more inclusive point of view, it’s a pig you can live with.
There’s worse out there, and their power is growing.
When All Is Said and Dunn 