Republican Ethics the Republican Party

Republican Ethics The Republican Party of the United States of America is a very interesting entity. On the one hand, it ostensibly stands for small government and reduced intervention into people's lives, yet at the same time it intervenes quite heavily in such issues as abortion and religion (RNC.org). Initially, this seems like a paradox -- a party that speaks of less government and greater individual freedom appears to be limiting freedom, which would be a violation of its own ethics.

Yet Republicans have persisted in much the same way, at least in regards to these matters, for several decades, and arguably much further back in the history of this nation. How is it that the Republican Party can maintain any sense of ethical rectitude when manages to spend so much time expounding the virtues of individual liberty while at the same time appearing to limit those liberties? Is this truly unethical, or is the situation more complex than it appears? First, it is essential to get the facts straight.

The Republican Party truly has been the party of freedom and equality for much of its history, during far different and more controversial times than the present era. Not only is it the party of Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery, but such sentiments extend even farther back in American history.

Frank Abial Flower, a Republican historian of the nineteenth century, recalled the Republican reaction to the Dred Scott decision as an abhorrence at the "barbarism of the majority of the court" for upholding principles of "slavocracy" as a "divine institution" (Flower, 110). Such rhetoric makes it clear what the Republican attitude towards slavery was; this party's identity since its early days has been that of a protector of liberties and an arbiter of equality. These are identities that the party still claims today (RNC.org).

One might reasonably wonder, then, why such groups as the Log Cabin Republicans must exist with the stated purpose "to achieve a more inclusive GOP" (Logcabin.org). A consideration of the facts as they stand today reveals a party that is far less inclusive and liberty-loving than the old Republican Party. It is not necessarily that Republican values have changed, however, but rather it is equally possible that American and global society has changed in ways that do not align with Republican values.

A large part of the Republican Party's opposition to slavery and desire for increased liberty and equality stems from moral considerations of decent human behavior (RNC.org). In the modern era, as certain societal mores -- particularly those having to do with restrictions on sexuality and other issues of the human body -- have become more lax or disappeared entirely, The Republican Party has been faced with the dilemma of shifting its values.

On the one hand, the party still stood (and stands) for individual liberty; on the other hand, the party also strongly believes in a societal mandate for morality. The party's decisions in the latter half of the twentieth century and for the first decade of the twenty-first century have been marked by an adherence to Republican moral beliefs, rather than the party's commitment to liberty and equality. The two issues that most clearly outline the Republican attitude in this regard are abortion and gay rights.

The Republican Party considers both abortion and homosexuality to be immoral behaviors, not only unworthy of governmental protection and inclusions but even damaging to the very fabric of American society simply by dint of their existence (RNC.org).

Their rejection of homosexuals hassled to the formation of the Log Cabin Republican group, an alliance of gay and lesbian Republicans who believe in the governmental -- though obviously not all of the moral -- viewpoints of the Republican Party as a whole, but who did not feel represented by the party at large (Logcabin.org).

The Log Cabin faction considers itself a part of the Republican Party, but the official stance of the Republican Party itself is that the Log Cabin organization in no way speaks for or represents the party's beliefs or values, and though many of the Log Cabin members are also Republicans, the two are not automatically inclusive (RNC.org).

This makes the ethical dilemma faced by the Republican Party strikingly clear: they are caught between choosing to uphold their position on equality and personal liberty -- which would require them to include the Log Cabin Republicans and other groups, such as pro-choicers -- and upholding their moral values by condemning these groups and continuing to attempt legislative restrictions on their activities. Applications of different systems of ethics makes it equally clear that there is no real answer to this quandary.

John Stuart Mill's viewpoint on the issue of homosexuality would be very difficult to determine; like the Republican Party, he was born in an era where Christian values and morals were generally accepted as universally applicable, even by atheists. Homosexuality was far more abhorrent to the public mind then than it is now, and it seems likely that Mill would not have approved of such relationships. His ethical system of utilitarianism, however, might disagree. Mill claims that "Our moral faculty..

supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete" (Mill, Chapter 1, par. 3). To determine morality in the concrete, ill advances his Happiness or Utilitarian theory, that an act is moral if and only if its effects do more good than harm for a greater number of people (Mill).

Applying this to the Republican dilemma still does not provide clear results, however. The majority of people, according to scientific surveys, are heterosexual. Therefore the majority of people are not directly affected by issues of gay rights. Likewise, there are more people in this country that are not Republicans then there are people that are, so the issue might seem to be moot. There are utilitarian arguments that can be and have been applied to this issue, however.

First, there is the claim that homosexuality is a private sexual matter between consenting adults, and that it causes no harm to the community even if it is considered immoral by society at large. Because it causes no concrete harm, but does lead to happiness for millions of America, homosexuality seems ethically permissible according to utilitarianism, and therefore the Republican Party should accept their gay faction fully. The response to this is that immoral behavior does cause harm to society at large, by weakening the bonds between.