The "Values" Panic

The right has no monopoly on morals--or on moral bullying.

Cathy Young from the February 2005 issue

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It's ironic that some of the same people who deride the narrow moralism of the "values voters"--Jane Smiley in her now-infamous rant in Slate, for instance--also deplore the "greed" driving Bush's re-election. Greed is to the moralists of the left what sex is to the moralists of the right.

It is worth noting that more conventional sexual moralism of the coercive variety has come from the left--most notably the crusade against sexual harassment in the 1990s. As far as I know, no evangelical Christian group has yet succeeded in getting a judge to enjoin a private employer to ban all sexually themed reading materials and images from the workplace. Feminist attorneys have.

It's quite true that neither the "red" nor the "blue" states have a monopoly on moral values. By the same token, neither side has a monopoly on moral bullying.�