how Dems can deliver law & order

The president refused to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol on January 6. Now, he's sending them throughout the capital. The J6 criminals, some of whom bragged about beating up cops, were worthy of pardons. But immigrants without records working in Washington are now targeted.

Democrats are angry and alarmed. We should be. But too many Americans tune us out on law & order issues. Democrats can change that by grappling with the moral foundations of law & order.

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) was developed by the behavioral scientist Jonathan Haidt. It posits five moral foundations that underpin humans' intuitions about right and wrong:

Care: Prevent harm. Show compassion. Evolved from parental care.

Fairness: Prevent cheating. Show attention to individual rights. Evolved from reciprocal altruism.

Loyalty: Prevent betrayal. Show solidarity and self-sacrifice. Evolved from tribal living.

Authority: Respect hierarchy & legitimate leadership. Show respect for leaders and traditions. Evolved from primate dominance structures.

Sanctity: Uplift the noble and suppress the carnal. Avoid contamination. Evolved from pathogen avoidance and cultural taboos.

Care and fairness are individualizing foundations. They revolve around the welfare of the individual. Loyalty, authority, and sanctity are binding foundations. They revolve around group cohesion.

All five foundations resonate with everyone, across all cultures. Haidt's and others' work demonstrates how both individualizing and binding moral foundations evolved. There are many interesting implications and applications.

But one research finding is particularly important for politics. Cultural conservatives emphasize the binding foundations more than liberals. Loyalty, authority, and sanctity are more important to conservatives than to liberals. This finding applies in both the United States and many other, different societies.

Source: Jonathan Haidt (2008)

Coming back to law & order. The unlock for liberals is to activate the binding moral foundations. For public safety, it is a mistake to downplay non-violent violations. Open-air drug use, shoplifting, loitering, panhandling, encampments: these are not victimless. The victim is social order; they grind at our moral foundations for group cohesion.

The response to these non-violent violations need not be callous. Integrate mental healthcare with first response (care). Ensure due process (fairness). Liberal law & order will always center the individualizing moral foundations. But it must also respect the binding moral foundations.

The same is true for a principal cause of violent crime: guns. I am a strong gun safety supporter. That's mostly because it reduces gun violence (care). I am also a veteran. As a Marine officer, I slept, ate, trained, and patrolled with an assault weapon for four years. I cleaned it before I ate or slept every night. Selling AR-15s at Walmart to teenagers is not just dangerous. It also undermines the military ethic (authority) and degrades warrior craftsmanship (sanctity). Activating the sanctity moral foundation is particularly important for gun safety debates, because Republicans rely on it when they holler that even reforms supported by a supermajority of Americans, like safe storage laws, are taboo because they violate the Second Amendment.

Republicans do not just distort the Second Amendment. (It's the only place in the Constitution where the word regulate appears.) They disrespect the law at every turn. This is not popular with the median American. Outside of the MAGA base, Americans (including reluctant 2024 Donald Trump voters) reject the president's election denialism; the thuggery of his immigration enforcement; and the corruption of his administration. In turn, Democrats are more trusted to follow the law and defend democracy.

Yet, it's law & order. Not just the law. Americans must perceive Democrats as upholding order in their daily lives. That means elevating the binding moral foundations. Otherwise, we will not flip this issue.