There are attempts to rescue these terms as descriptively useful for ideologies by prefacing them with “fiscally” or “socially”. But what does social conservatism have to do with fiscal conservatism ideologically? Others have drawn up a multiplicity of moral foundations to explain why people group around these labels. This is probably closer to the mark: emotional appeal is a better test of a mass movement than ideological consistency.

But rather than a collection of foundations, the dichotomy between the conservative and the liberal mindset can be boiled down to a heuristic; a mental shortcut when looking at a stranger: the liberal says, “This person is like me”, and the Conservative says “This person is not like me”.

This is why, according to Moral Foundations Theory, solidarity plays such a big role in the conservative mindset and not the liberal. It’s why the world seems scarier – the threat of muslims, terrorists, and communists always strike the conservative heart more deeply. It’s also why conservatives tend to see their culture as it exists as something in need of protection, whether from immigrants, gays, or youth.

The tendency to downplay interpersonal differences also explains the liberal insistence on unqualified welfare benefits. Unable or unwilling to see any differences except accidental ones between himself and a less well-off individual, he imagines himself in that situation without any thought to the circumstances leading up to it. Thus the stridence with which liberals oppose drug testing, means testing, or any sort of restrictions or qualifications on welfare, serves to preserve their own hypothetical dignity. Conversely, the animus against the rich common on the left reflects the fact that these liberals, not being able to conceive of themselves as deserving vast sums of money, cannot conceive that anyone should deserve it. “No one can earn a million dollars honestly,” as the saying went.

These mindsets also inform the typical attitudes toward criminal justice. The liberal is more likely to chalk up the guilt to external circumstances because he imagines them constituting most,if not all, of the difference between them. The conservative, on the other hand, is stereotypically “tough on crime”. Unable to see himself committing such a crime under any circumstances, it’s easier for the conservative to assign blame to the criminal’s personal character.

It’s been said that conservatives are generally less bothered by inequality as such than liberals, for exactly this reason. Where the liberal cannot see any difference between himself and the less fortunate, the conservative is always ready to posit a difference that explains the outcomes. Thus conservatives oppose what they see as leveling against the natural order. The decline of the landed elites in the face of the rise of the market was deeply lamented by conservatives as liberalism fought against political privilege. Now that the liberalism has turned against the market in pursuit of ever more egalitarian aims, conservatism has adjusted itself to hold the market, rather than heredity, as reflecting the inherent differences in people.

This even holds outside of the political context. Theological liberalism was a rejection of the supernatural in favor of a universal brotherhood of man under God. On the other hand, theological conservatism universally rejected universalism, likely in large part as a reaction against liberal protestantism. The distinction between the saved and the unsaved is inconvenient for the liberal mind, and perhaps too convenient for the conservative mind.

Finally, this also explains why National Socialism is considered a “right-wing” movement while Leninism is considered “left-wing”, despite being largely similar in terms of actual political ideology (“Socialism of the German variety” and “Socialism of the Russian variety”): they rested on appeals to very different mindsets. Nazism embodied extreme parochial nationalism on the one hand, and Leninism extreme revolutionary universalism on the other. The one emphasized the uniqueness of the Aryan; the other the universal solidarity of the working class.

This is, of course, painting in broad strokes. No doubt many self-consciously intellectual and self-described conservatives and liberals do come to conclusions from a consistent ideology, rather than piecemeal from a heuristic. But the fact remains that, whatever the specific ideological content of the words at any point in time, that content has shifted radically – but the type of person generally self-describing as those words has not changed. The more ideological may indeed find themselves on the opposite side from where they started: consistent pro-market ideology, once called liberal, now called “classical liberal” or libertarian, now often finds itself lumped in with conservatism, despite their lack of affinity for the conservative heuristic.

Nor does everyone necessarily fall to one side or the other. There are aspects in which people are similar to one another, and there are aspects in which they are different. It is the task of an ideology, whether political, theological, sociological, or anything else, to determine at which points people are similar or different, and which of these points are salient. A persistent bias one way or the other, far from being a point of identity or solidarity, is a cloud over clear thought and a vitiation of its ideology.

For Democrats, blame lies with Republicans who refused to allow tax increases.

“We need a balanced approach. And the extremism, the Tea Party obstructionism here in Washington, is keeping us from restoring that balanced approach that America has always used of investing in the future, investing in job creation, and also being fiscally responsible at the same time,” said Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

-Blame Game Vitriol Demonstrates S&P Disgust

So the Tea Party, which wouldn’t accept tax increases as part of a debt deal, is responsible for the downgrade?

Casting the issue in terms of “balance” is a marvelous rhetorical sleight of hand – as if spending cuts are a Republican (or even Tea Party) thing and tax increases are a Democratic thing, and both sides have to give a little to get us out of the crisis. It’s partisan moral equivalence. Sounds wonderfully magnanimous and bipartisan, doesn’t it?

That would be a good way to cast the issue if we were dealing with feuding families. If the Hatfields and the McCoys are fighting over a piece of land and making everyone around miserable with late night gunfire, public opinion might justefiedly tell them, “split the difference and leave us be”.

But we’re not dealing with private families. They’re not fighting over Republican territory and Democratic territory. They’re fighting over our money – and that changes the entire dynamic of the fight. Instead of imagining yourself as a bystander to a fight, imagine yourself walking back from dinner one night when a mugger approaches you and demands your wallet. You decide to fight, and after exchanging a few blows, you realize you are about evenly matched in strength. The mugger, getting tired, pushes for a compromise: “While wrangling for your wallet, I saw you had about $1,000. Why don’t you give me $500 and I’ll call it a day. After all, we’ve got to have a balanced resolution to this conflict, and I need to buy healthcare for my wife. I’ll even give some of my half to the soup kitchen down the street.”

Is this an appropriate situation to which to apply moral equivalence? If you refused, and your fight damaged the restaurant beside you, would you be at fault once the cops came? Would they charge you with being “obstructionist” for fighting when you could have just compromised and given him the $500?

To blame the downgrade on a failure to raise taxes is to say the mugger has an equal right to your money as you do; that there is no presumption one way or another, so whatever stops the violence is the way to go. And the fact that the mugger promised to buy healthcare for his wife would give him even more of an entitlement to your money.

I doubt anyone would side with the mugger in this situation. So the only way left to hold that tax increases constitute appropriate “balance” is to question the aptness of the analogy. What would justify the mugger in taking your money? If he organizes his family into a mafia and offers you “protection”? If he buys certain things for you with your money? If he robs everyone on the block, most of whom readily comply? If five people approach you and let you pick which of them mugs you? If he robs you once a year, but to date had only taken $400 at a time? What makes tax increases appropriate, but not highway robbery?

Martin O’Malley, John Kerry, and David Axelrod are the problem. Their rhetoric is our national sclerosis; the entitlements they defend so vociferously the very reason we have come to a budget crisis at all. And while it’s fair to question the genuineness of the Tea Party in their budget rhetoric – it’s much easier to talk a small government game than to actually do something about it – there is no question their rhetoric is in the right.

Since 2009, the value of the Plenary Indulgence has fallen 17% against a basket of penances including the Hail Mary and the Our Father. At the close of churches on Sunday it was trading at 1.2 Years of Purgatory per indulgence, its lowest value in nearly five centuries.

But officials at the Vatican were quick to reassure penitents.

Ben Tetzel, chairman of the Vatican Reserve, the Church’s official storehouse of merit which is charged with maintaining the value of the Indulgence, stated in a press conference on Tuesday that church recovery is “on the horizon”, and that the skyrocketing price of penance is “transitory”.

However, many are skeptical of Tetzel’s optimism. Martin Wurzelbacher, a small church owner in Ohio, has become a lightning rod for dissatisfaction with Vatican policy since Pope Benedict’s stumbling response to 95 questions he raised at a town hall meeting near his hometown in March.

“Tetzel’s policy has been a disaster for the Church,” he said in an interview with ABC on Friday. “Indulgences are buying fewer and fewer years of purgatory, and all of a sudden the Catholic dream is out of reach for your average family.”

Others have also expressed skepticism of the Reserve’s ability to recall the indulgences once church recovery begins, but Pope Benedict believes the policy is necessary to close the Church’s massive grace deficit. He has also proposed a 5% “saint tax” on all grace earned from nonsacramental merit. The measure is expected to go for a vote in the College of Cardinals on Thursday.

The Vatican Reserve Board is scheduled to meet next month, after which it is widely expected that Tetzel will announce a second round of plenary easing

We have seen how a simple announcement of discontinuance of protection for non-contributors might work in the case of defense. Fire protection would probably fall into the same mold. Let just one house burn down, with the private fire department and its apparatus on the scene but refusing to quench the flames – all because the owner not only did not keep the company on retainer, but also refused to meet a “special, emergency price” – and let this event be widely reported by the media, and fire protection would probably cease, from that moment on, to be an example of Olson’s public goods.

-Walter Block, Public Goods and Externalities (1983).

This condition was realized late last month. Except for the special emergency price, Block’s excerpt reads almost prophetically. The mayor sums up succinctly why the policy was in place, demonstrating a clear grasp of logical cause and effect:

South Fulton’s mayor said that the fire department can’t let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on fire.

So will fire protection cease to be regarded as a public good now? Can we count it among the other things the private market excels at providing? Well…

“Professional, career firefighters shouldn’t be forced to check a list before running out the door to see which homeowners have paid up,” Harold Schaitberger, International Association of Fire Fighters president, said in a statement. “They get in their trucks and go.”

…not if the moralizers get their way. And boy has this story sparked an outpouring of sanctimonious moralizing. This story is definitive proof that the only thing standing in the way of total privatization of fire departments is peoples’ misguided moralism. Shouldn’t people have a choice as to the amount of risk they assume in life? Obviously the Cranick family had better things to do with the fee than buy fire protection. It was a bad decision in retrospect, but so is the decision to skimp on car insurance once you get in a wreck. Should the insurance company be forced to cover damages you didn’t pay for them to cover?

Indeed, how is the socialization of fire protection – forcing everyone to pay for everyone else’s – any different in principle from the socialization of healthcare, except for the fact that it’s already the norm? Anyone with the slightest misgivings towards Obama’s Affordable Health Care for America Act must also be sympathetic towards these firefighters. Why would we expect them to act any more altruistically than doctors?

If we want fire protection, and if we want to shrink the scope of government, then let’s cheer this resounding expulsion of fire protection from the category of public goods. If we think that our money is better spent by ourselves than by the government on our behalf, then let’s clamor to see this fire policy everywhere.

A few miles south, Cuba finds itself in even more dire economic straits than the US. The drastic step of cutting 10% of the government workforce was just announced – which in a Communist regime is almost 10% of the total workforce, in the hope that a private economy can spring up where none has existed for decades.

This means that Cuba’s unemployment is about to go from virtually zero to ten percent in a month. Though some are hopeful, others are naturally wary of the changes:

“To imagine that the private sector is going to absorb so many people is a bit of a stretch,” he said. “It’s going to be major problem for the country.”

Here’s where the Democrats can do some real good for Americans, for Cubans, and look good while doing it. Obama says “That’s what we Democrats believe in — a vibrant free market“. The guffaws from everyone but his own party notwithstanding, the lip service paid to the free market could use some actual feet, and Cuba is the perfect opportunity:

End the Cuban embargo totally and immediately.

The embargo is a cold war relic. Communism as such is no longer a threat; and all the posturing against it was totally ineffective in keeping Socialism out of the American system. If it was designed to do any good at all, this is it. If you’ve been waiting for a good opportunity, Fidel has laid it at the doorstep of the Capitol dressed up in a ribbon.

It’s easy enough to see how this would appeal to the Left. Rescinding pointlessly punitive measures against Cuba would portray the Democrats as compassionate to the new plight of Cuban workers. And the Right, likewise, would eat up rhetoric portraying Cuba’s announcement as “victory”, and even further relish the opportunity to be magnanimous in helping these Cuban workers back on their feet through the engine of trade and private enterprise.

It won’t be a moment too soon, either. November fast approaches, and if a Democratic congress won’t consider it, let’s hope a Republican congress will.