Hopes and Dreamers: DACA and the Purpose of Morality

With the fates of 800,000 DACA applicants on the line, I wonder if it’s a good time for Americans to reflect on the moral issues at stake in this situation. These days people on either side of the political spectrum tend think the other side is simply amoral. But that’s usually not true (even if a few on both sides really are amoral). Most people on different sides of the political spectrum actually think morals (or ethics, I’ll use the words interchangeably) are crucially important, but they think of morality in fundamentally different terms. The words “morality” and “ethics” mean something very different to conservatives than to liberals. This isn’t just my opinion--there’s a lot of psychological research to back this up.

The DACA issue highlights these different ways of thinking about ethics or morality. For example, you’ll hear many liberals (including me) and moderate conservatives saying that Dreamers did nothing wrong. They were brought here by their parents, they had no choice in the matter, and often barely remember the country they came from. But you’ll hear other conservatives saying, “The law is the law. They’re here illegally.” For them, that’s the critical moral fact. These folks may actually believe that morality requires that Dreamers be deported. They’re not trying to be evil (how many people really try to be evil?) As hard as it is for liberals like me to imagine, most are actually trying to do the right thing, within their moral framework.

But a lot of pain in this world has been inflicted by people trying to do the right thing--that’s why it’s so important to consider carefully what the right thing actually is. So let’s do that. If different sides are framing morality in such different terms, then maybe it would be helpful to lay these different approaches on the table and compare them. To put it another way, maybe this is a good time for Americans to think about what morality is fundamentally about. What’s the stuff actually for? What’s the point of being moral or ethical in the first place?

I once spent a couple of years reading everything I could about ethical theories, but I finally realized that for me, ethics boils down to something very close to the Golden Rule: treat others as I would want them to treat me. When in doubt about the right thing to do (and there’s often doubt) err on the side of compassion. As I see it, the fundamental fact that even makes ethics necessary is that other people have feelings. They have pleasures and pains, and hopes and dreams, just like I do, and theirs are just as intense as mine. I can’t prove that, but I think it’s an extremely safe assumption. (I should also say I’m not that good at following the Golden Rule, but I should be, and this is why I think so.)

Anyway, if ethics is fundamentally about the fact that other people have hopes and feelings, the next question is: who should I treat ethically? My answer is: anyone capable of pleasure and pain, and hopes and dreams. In other words, any human being (and many animals, too, but that’s another topic). That means how I treat someone shouldn’t depend on what language they speak, or what God they do or don’t pray to, or what country they were born in, or live in now. Those things don’t matter. What matters is that they are human, and have feelings and hopes just as intense as mine.

Some people will be reading all this and shaking their heads, because again, many Americans fundamentally disagree with my view of what morality is about. For them, morality is about other things: maybe it’s about following rules or laws scrupulously, or purity in sex or language. Maybe it’s about doing what they believe God wants, or making sure people get the rewards or punishments they deserve (an eye for an eye, etc.). For many people, a crucial component of morality is in-group loyalty: watching out for “your” people, and being suspicious of others. They actually see that as the right thing to do. Again, that's hard for liberals to remember, so we risk falling into the intellectually-lazy habit of thinking they are simply amoral.

Of course, not all conservatives think in these “if you’re not one of my people, you matter less” terms, but many on the far right do, and it’s not hard to find examples. Not long ago a guy told me he would rather see a million foreigners die than one American. A million! I’ve heard similar sentiments all my life. They’re not uncommon. And for some people with that outlook, it’s a pretty narrow group that counts as an American. You can see this if you drive down the interstate and see those motel billboards that have the little Christian fish on them, or say “American-owned”. That’s to tell travelers that the motel isn’t owned by immigrants with non-English accents and “foreign” religions. It doesn’t matter that those immigrants are most likely naturalized citizens who therefore ARE Americans, every bit as much as I am. They don’t match some people’s image of what an American is, and very often that means they don’t get the same moral consideration. They’re seen as “other”, and you better believe that makes a difference in how some people treat them.

But the fact is, most people have trouble empathizing with people who are different from them (I’ve already noted how hard it is for liberals like me to remember most conservatives believe they are doing the right thing.) Maybe it just requires more imagination to put ourselves in such different shoes, or maybe it’s human nature. Everyone does it, to some extent. But for some on the right (notice I didn’t say “all”) that basic human tendency is something to be embraced. They think it’s just self-evident that “our people” deserve more moral consideration than “others”. They also tend to think rules or laws should be followed scrupulously even if they cause human suffering.

I think both of these assumptions need to be seriously questioned, because they’ve both caused an enormous amount of pain in this world. That’s why I think people need to stop and ask themselves something they may never have asked before: what is morality really about? Why be moral at all? What if the reason rules and laws exist in the first place isn’t for their own sake, but for the sake of making the world a nicer place to live in; to make societies more conducive to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And what if all people are, in fact, created equal? What if whether you should treat someone decently doesn’t depend on whether they are “your people”, but whether they’re human beings with hopes, dreams, and feelings? Because that’s exactly what they are, and the hopes and dreams of 800,000 human beings are riding on how people answer these important moral questions.