The Arc of the Moral Universe

In a lot of ways, Barack Obama is not the most left-wing American President ever. He's quite hawkish on foreign policy, although to be fair that really doesn't set him apart, and he's probably to the right of people like Kennedy and Johnson on economic issues. But he really is unambiguously the most left-wing President this nation has ever seen when it comes to so-called "social issues." Second on that list, of course, is Bill Clinton. That's not an accident. The phenomenon whereby the Democratic Party represents basically everyone whose personhood and legitimacy social conservativism tries to deny is a very recent thing. And the portfolio of groups to whom the political leaders of that left-wing coalition of cultural outcasts and minorities want to extend equality, in a symbolic/philosophical way at least, is getting larger by the minute.

My occasion for mentioning this is, of course, Obama's endorsement of gay marriage this afternoon. I find it a bit difficult to think of any significant way in which Obama currently opposes considering any group in society to not be entitled to full respect as human beings. (Obviously, he's nowhere near as radical on extending moral equality as I am, but then we non-specieists are a decided minority. Also you can argue about various types of criminals, but that's sort of a different thing.) And I think that this view, that basically every non-violent-criminal in human society is deserving of full and equal moral respect, commands roughly two-to-one support among young persons, meaning my generation, about half a generation above it, and everyone younger than us. Of course, that doesn't mean the opposing view, that a very large number of members of human society are deeply morally inferior and do not deserve respect, at least not in the ways that we liberals mean that word, is going away any time soon. But it does mean that it might become very seriously politically implausible to pander to that view rather soon.