No, Richard Hanania. Social Conservatism Is Not 4D Chess.

The argument for social conservatism is not consequentialist, but moral.

A month ago, Richard Hanania accused social conservatives of playing “4D Chess,” that is, of making fallacious consequentialist arguments for their positions.

Hanania, the author of The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics, has become a prominent voice of the libertarian, secular right. Social conservatives and the religious right have often come into his cross-hairs for alleged moralism and foolhardy policy proposals.

In “Social Conservatism as 4D Chess,” Hanania argued that most social conservative arguments rest on incorrect predictions about the downstream effects of progressive policies. For example, social conservatives oppose euthanasia of the elderly and terminally ill because they think that it will lead “to a Nazi-like devaluing of human life.”

These are just slippery-slope arguments, disprovable by empirical evidence, Hanania argues. European countries have been allowing euthanasia for decades, and it has not led to widespread disregard for human life.

Hanania’s accusation depends on construing the arguments of social conservatives as consequentialist in nature.

But as a social conservative myself, I must beg to differ: The main arguments of social conservatism are not consequentialist ones, based on empirical predictions. Rather, they are moral arguments, sharpening our moral vision in areas where all appears grey.

Moral, Not Consequentialist

Midjourney’s take on Immanuel Kant, the father of deontology.

Social conservatives are committed to their ends primarily on moral grounds, not consequentialist ones. We do not say that, abortion is wrong because, if you allow for abortion, then someday they will kill unwanted three-year-olds. No, abortion is wrong in itself, because it is the unjustified taking of innocent human life. See the difference?

The social conservative argument is not, therefore, a consequentialist one at all. The argument is a deontological one, i.e., a moral one.

Why does Hanania think otherwise? Because he sees social conservatives arguing from areas that everyone agrees on to areas where people “don’t share their moral intuitions.”

For example, he paraphrases social conservatives saying, “By ‘commodifying all of human sexuality’ you make it more difficult to have ‘long-term relationships based on mutual solidarity and love.’” Starting from something that everyone agrees on, that “long-term relationships based on love” are good, social conservatives try to elicit a conclusion about an area of moral disagreement: That sex work and pornography are wrong. Hanania takes the connection to be causal: That allowing sex work and pornography will lead to the undermining of the other, agreed-upon good of long-term loving relationships.

Hanania points out that this would be an empirical and testable hypothesis. We can determine whether the causal connection is valid by studying countries that have already legalized prostitution, in addition to pornography.

But, Hanania concludes: “If there were negative downstream effects of socially liberal policy, we would find some indication of them in cross-national comparisons. Yet we generally don’t.” Social conservative arguments are consequentialist in nature, and incorrect in fact.

Now, Hanania is correct that social conservative arguments move from the black-and-white to the morally grey. But the connection social conservatives posit is not causal: Doing A will lead to B. The connection is that of moral equivalence: That doing A is morally equivalent to doing B.

Start from where morality is black and white. We all accept, for example, that murder and theft are immoral.

Then there’s the grey area: Abortion and euthanasia, or stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving niece. How do we reason morally here? Often, by equating one of the ambiguous acts, like abortion in the first trimester, with one of the unambiguous acts, murder of an innocent child. I call this moral equation.

Is this just a rhetorical ploy? After all, if the two were equivalent, then there would be no need to utilize the rhetoric of moral equation in the first place. However, as we know from mathematics, 7,129,450/1,823,785 sure doesn’t look like 4, but it is. And while the lines in the Müller-Lyer Illusion sure don’t look the same length, they nevertheless are.

Are the horizontal lines the same length?

Here’s an example of moral equation in action: The Nazis believed in killing people who were biologically weak, whether from birth defect, mental retardation, or otherwise. They held explicitly that there is “life unworthy of life” (Lebensunwertes Leben).

Today, far from Berlin, Iceland has all but eliminated Down Syndrome. They did so - or rather, continue to do so - by aborting every fetus that is suspected to have Down Syndrome. Their reasoning is familiar: “We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication... preventing suffering for the child and for the family.” This assumes that there is a kind of life that involves suffering for the individual and their family that is simply not worth undertaking, lives that are not worth living. Iceland’s strategy is, thus, a progressive, hygienic-appearing version of Lebensunwertes Leben.

In making this argument, I am not predicting that Iceland is about to go “full Nazi,” killing adults who are intellectually disabled. Instead, I am arguing that Iceland already has done acts of the same kind as the Nazis did, medically-sanctioned killings on the principle of Lebensunwertes Leben.

My argument is not causal and, therefore, not consequentialist; it is an argument by moral equation. It moves from the realm of black and white into the realm of grey, and says, “Take a closer look. See, you can distinguish black from white, even here.”

To make an analogy, Hanania assumes that social conservatives mistook a 3D View Master for a pair of binoculars and are trying to make out the future.

Actually, we’re operating a powerful digital zoom: An apparently uniform grey turns out to be composed of distinguishable black and white pixels.

What Hanania thinks social conservatives are doing; and what we're actually doing.

The argument for social conservatism is not consequentialist but moral.

The Social Conservative Temptation to Poor Empirical Prediction

But social conservatives do sometimes make consequentialist arguments. And when they do, they are prone to error.

For example, social conservatives have recently been pushing policies they hope will increase birth-rates in Western countries.

Against the assumption that pushing socially conservative policies will lead to socially conservative outcomes, Hanania gives the example of South Korea. South Korea has very traditional social conservative policies: “It bans pornography, banned abortion until it was decriminalized by court order in 2021, and has no civil rights protections for trans or LGBT. …[Prostitution] and euthanasia are strictly prohibited.”

Yet these socially conservative policies have not led to socially conservative outcomes: “[South Korea] has the lowest birth rate of any large population ever recorded in human history”: .81 births per woman. Hanania concludes: “So much for the idea that socially conservative policy creates a culture in which people are more likely to form families!”

It appears that Hanania is right about this: Acceptance of socially conservative morality does not provide accurate social-scientific hypotheses or policy proposals. Social conservatives who venture beyond the realm of pure morality into that of politics and empirical reality must master social science and accurate understandings of the consequences of political policies.

Social Conservatism As a Way of Life

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

But social conservatism, before it ever issues in a political program, is a way of life.

For me, social conservatism is, first, a matter of how I believe I and others are obligated to live. When my wife was expecting our first child, the doctors offered a screening for early detection of genetic defects. I asked what purpose that could serve, and they answered that, though genetic defects could not be treated, they could provide reasons for terminating a pregnancy. As a result, we declined the screening. Our eldest son would not have been helped in any way by the termination of his life in his mother’s womb.

Now if our son had suffered from Down Syndrome, our lives would have been affected significantly. Parenting would have been additionally burdensome in certain ways. And we would need a supportive community around us, rather than one that wondered why our son was permitted to come into existence in the first place. That is social conservatism as a way of life.

But should society obligate all parents of fetuses suspected to have Down Syndrome to bear and rear them, with the suffering this may entail? Already, we have moved from morality to politics. We need to recognize that the question of social conservative politics is much more ambiguous than the question of morality itself.

After all, social conservatives debate whether and how to legislate morality and have done so for a long time. For example, in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas laid down a principle of law that modern social conservatives would do well to heed. In his Summa Theologiae, he responds to the question, “Whether it belongs to the human law to repress all vices?” Aquinas answered that society should only forbid “the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain.” This is for the rather obvious reason that “human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue.”

In the realm of politics, social conservatives need to pay attention to consequences and the limits of imperfect human nature. At the present moment, this means that social conservatives need to pay close attention to the population at large. How can they be encouraged to live more in line with social conservative principles? It is probably not by heavy-handed legislation. After all, at least half the population disagrees with social conservatism itself. Much more needs to be done through culture and persuasion before Western populations will gladly submit to the legal yoke of social conservatism again.

Why Socially Progressive Policies Won’t Lead to Overt Nazism

Western doctors of the future?

Hanania understands social conservatism to argue that adopting socially progressive policies will lead to overt Nazi or eugenic policies. I responded that socially progressive policies already are acts of eugenics on the principle of “life unworthy of life.”

Now I want to argue that socially progressive policies will probably not lead to overt eugenic policies since that would be to lose the façade of virtue that progressive policies maintain.

Contemporary progressive policies around abortion, genetic selection, and euthanasia restrict the application of the principle Lebensunwertes Leben to the beginning and end of life. At these times, killings occur inside hospitals, beyond the public eye, with the cover of medical professionalism and legality. Restricting eugenic killings to these circumstances permits secular liberal societies to maintain their self-conception as merciful and committed to the flourishing of life, not its destruction.

If these limits are not maintained and eugenic activities become more overt, then the game is up: Liberalism must admit that it is just another strain of Nazi vitalism. So it is unlikely that liberal societies will allow disregard of imperfect human life to become more widespread.

While social liberals point to the differences between progressive and Nazi bioethical policies as morally salient, I see them as primarily about keeping up appearances. The moral evil of the acts is disguised by the appearance of professionalism and legality.

So now, twice over, I can say that the social conservative argument does not predict that socially progressive policies will lead to overt Nazi policies. In fact, it is more likely that liberal societies will maintain the appearance of being non-violent, hygienic, and life-affirming even while carrying out the kinds of eugenic procedures that almost all human societies have engaged in, apart from the influence of Judeo-Christian religion.

Moralizing Is Bad for Thinking

I want to finish with two more points of agreement with Hanania.

Hanania writes, “I simply reject the idea that in most cases government policy in a free country can do all that much to change the culture in a predictable direction.” I agree. While we don’t need to abandon legal and political effort, the task of persuasion and conversation is one to which we must redirect effort.

Secondly, Hanania diagnoses, “The problem with social conservatism isn’t necessarily that its goals are often wrong, but that, inspired by motivated reasoning, it lacks epistemological humility.”

I have argued the same about insular Christian theorizing, calling it “Christian coherentism.” It’s easy to take a moral or religious point of view and assume that certain outcomes must follow in the world. But we need empirical data from the social sciences to inform us about how the world works, not always in accord with social conservative priors.

This is, in fact, where I find writers of the secular libertarian bent so helpful. Unclouded by moral presumption, they follow the data where it leads.

At the same time, they are prone to mistaking the moral claims of social conservatives for empirical predictions, as Hanania does.

That’s why I also argue that the secular right is not enough. It needs the moral compass that religious and social conservatism provide. Without it, it sees nothing but consequentialist reasoning.

And if that’s all you can see, what could social conservatism be but 4D chess?

“Richard Hanania, good game. Nice playing with you.”