DISQUS

"Moreover, what is it about the era of George W. Bush that makes Jonah think that conservatives and libertarians see eye to eye on the large questions of political economy?"

What is it about the era of George W. Bush that makes Will think that Bush has a conservative perspective on the large questions of political economy? "When people are hurting, government has to move" is not a conservative sentiment, and the Bush era is not generally representative of a conservative view of political economy.

"No one is watching you. Your job and your dreams may suddenly evaporate."

Someone is watching. Not just watching, but caring.

Perhaps more to the point, everybody *wants* someone to be watching them, and to care about their life. If they don't believe in God, or don't believe He cares, then they turn to government.

When we in fact arrive at a better place after the change, as we generally do, the conservative mostly just makes peace with it while insisting that we all panic about the next moral shift, which will surely bring down all of society along with it.

This is meaningless without specifics. We are better off with the changed views about discrimination based on race. But are we really better off with the current consensus that sex outside of marriage is acceptable, even something to be celebrated? Well, adults who like indulging their sexual urges have more fun, but the large numbers of children without two parents, and the teenagers pushed into sexual activity before they are emotionally ready, aren't really better off. It's fatuous to claim that all changes in moral consensus are beneficial.

Levin wants to defend the shudder when it comes to, say, cloning, but (I trust) not when it comes to the subhuman treatment of the Dalits. So, those of us armed with reason inevitably ask: “What’s the difference?” And he doesn’t have a good answer.

I don't think Levin or Kass want to "defend the shudder" in the sense that they reify the "shudder" into some sort of moral imperative. They merely want us to pay attention when there is widespread instinctive resistance to some novel behavior. The idea that there is no good answer to the question "what's the difference between the 'shudder' some people feel towards cloning, on the one hand, and towards touching the Dalits, on the other, is preposterous. The same rational argument applies to both: human beings are ends, not means, by virtue of their rational nature, and therefore should be treated accordingly. In the case of human clones, this means not creating them merely to destroy them, or merely to fulfill the will of the person creating the clone in the case where the clone is brought to full term. In the case of the Dalits, it means that the Dalits are the same type of moral, rational being as the upper castes, and therefore ought to be treated the same. In the former case, the shudder points to a moral truth that can be rationally defended; in the latter, it points to a moral falsehood.