Tristram Hunt: on how progressive politics is in danger of losing touch with notions of good and evil, dignity and nobility.
He takes the analysis from Susan Neiman’s new book, Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, and applies it to Labour’s deregulatory policies on betting shops and lap-dancing clubs. There have traditionally been two impulses in progressive politics: first, to create a society where certain human values and ideals can flourish – a society that has some common notions of what it means to be happy and fulfilled as a person; second, to create a society in which individuals are free to pursue their personal fulfilment in whatever way they choose. The latter move, which seems so attractive and egalitarian, can end up merging with the worst aspects of the unrestrained market economy: witness the proliferation of bookies and strip clubs in suburban high streets; it can also lead one to deny that there is anything objectively worthwhile about human life – other than the choice itself of how (or whether) to live.
These are big questions about the relationship between personal autonomy and objective morality, between subjective notions of happiness and objective fulfilment (if there is such a thing). Peter Maurin (co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement in New York) once said that we should try to create a society in which it is easier for people to be good. He wasn’t moralising. He meant, I think, that it is almost impossible to imagine how a politician – or anyone committed to their own community or society – can avoid having some notion of what is truly good and fulfilling for the human person. It’s hard, in other words, to have ideals and zeal for progress if one does not have some convictions about good and evil, dignity and nobility.
Bridges and Tangents 
I think that guidance is good but control is bad. People need to be free to experience their own life journey, to make whatever mistakes they need to make to bring them to a full realization of who they are and what really matters.
I’m having this conversation with myself currently over how to bring up my approaching teenage daughter and am feeling that I need to be really brave to let her go and even make the same awful mistakes that I made (something I’ve spent my life so far being desperate to avoid and mostly trying to work out how to avoid).
Surely God is within all of us and we are all experiencing our own personal journey with God. I think much harm comes when others think that they know best how someone else’s journey should be played out.
Hello
I’ve just uploaded two rare interviews with the Catholic activist Dorothy Day. One was made for the Christophers [1971]–i.e., Christopher Closeup– and the other for WCVB-TV Boston [1974].
Day had begun her service to the poor in New York City during the Depression with Peter Maurin, and it continued until her death in 1980. Their dedication to administering to the homeless, elderly, and disenfranchised continues with Catholic Worker homes in many parts of the world.
Please post or announce the availability of these videos for those who may be interested in hearing this remarkable lay minister.
They may be located here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/4854derrida
Thank you
Dean Taylor
Thanks for these interviews – Dorothy Day is one of my ‘greats’.