Ethical Majority

There's an interesting new blog called Ethical Majority formed by two moderate friends, liberal Jim and conservative Mike. Here is how they describe their blog in it's introductory entry:

There is clearly a growing cultural divide within this country. Some on the poltical right are claiming that their recent political victory is a mandate for their moral values. However, it is clear that there is a strong debate as to what constitutes moral values. We have noticed that when writers attempt to contribute to the discourse on morals, they frequently invoke ethics as well as morals. Often it is not clear whether the writer is trying to imply that the two terms are synonymous, or whether they are trying to cover a broader territory by including both morals and ethics, as two separate categories....

In the meantime, we would like to finish this first post by highlighting one sentence [from S.I. Hayakawa's Choose The Right Word]:

"agreeing, despite differing moral values, on ethical ways to work together."

That sentence almost perfectly captures our intent in creating this blog. We hope you will join us in our efforts.

Well, count me in. This also explains what I'm trying to do at The Moderate Liberal, though obviously from just a liberal perspective.

It isn't just ethics, though, I think if you dig deep enough you'll discover we all share mostly the same morals as well. We get so caught up with the hot-button issue of the day we forget we all agree on the basic, fundamental values: honesty, integrity, justice and the Golden Rule. You'll find these values promoted by every wise person in every culture on Earth. These are human values.

Unfortunately, it is also human to sometimes forget. Or sometimes we only apply these values to "us" and not towards "them". To me the very foundation of liberalism is to make the group we call "us" a bit bigger and make "them" as small a group as possible.