Conservatives and liberals conflict over their basic views on human nature
At first glance it's difficult to understand why those people who are most willing to bow their heads to the prince of peace would also be interested in funding weapons of war - let alone to ignore his call to help the least among us. Likewise, it's curious that the logic of cutting our already underfunded social programs because we need to be "fiscally responsible" doesn't also apply to the $711 billion price tag for military spending in 2008-2009 (about 25% of our national budget and nearly as large as the rest of the world's military spending combined). Even in the conservative stalwart position on states' rights there is some cognitive dissonance. States should have the right to restrict abortion despite the Supreme Court's ruling, but there should also be a constitutional amendment to keep Massachusetts and Connecticut from allowing gay marriage. It's difficult to understand any justification that would allow someone to hold two opposing and contradictory views simultaneously on a single issue. But, rest assured, cartwheels of logic aside, there is a connection.Conservatism is about spending vast sums of money to create a police state-like society and maintain a permanent underclass of relatively cheap labor(thus it's unhinged hatred for unions). Conservatiism's roots are in the authroutarian arritocrcy of 14th century Europe. Conservatives firmly believe government and economic power cannot be trusted to the working class. Their only appeal to the working class is extremist religious views which just so happen reinforce the home as a plantation model with the master in charge.
Underlying all of these issues lay a basic belief in traditional gender roles and an assumption that human nature is essentially base, self-indulgent and unchanging. We therefore need a strong authority to keep our rapacious vices at bay and a firm hand to guide our moral character. We should appeal to Christ for the salvation of our own wickedness, but keep a large arsenal at the ready to protect against the wickedness of others. Furthermore, governments shouldn't coddle those who make the wrong moral choices but should encourage strength and independence so they can stand on their own two feet - after all, people will only take advantage of government assistance. From this basic assumption, conservatives transform what looks like economic lunacy from one perspective into their argument for fiscal responsibility. As for the "wedge" issues of gay marriage and abortion, it is simply that allowing behavior that deviates from traditional norms could upset the balance of heterosexual monogamy. By doing so we would be flinging open the gates for a whole range of deviant behaviors and desires that would assail our carefully balanced civilization. It's not simply about sex; it's about stability. For a conservative, then, human nature has us tiptoeing precariously along the ledge between right and wrong, with temptation always grappling at our feet.
Liberals also have a unique perspective on human nature, though it would seem that Levin's ideological blinders prevented him from seeing it. Levin claims that liberal assumptions are based on the view that "most human problems are functions of an imperfect distribution of resources." This is a tenuous connection at best and seems intended merely to connect liberalism with Marxism. While economic justice is an important issue for liberals, the areas of concern are considerably broader than simply focusing on how resources are divided.
For example, concern for gay and lesbian rights is not based on economic inequality nor does the environmental movement build its foundation on a desire for the redistribution of wealth. In fact, the environmental movement has had a difficult time reaching out to labor unions based on the (largely erroneous) fear that the two are at odds with one another. It's also difficult to see how Levin can equate diplomacy with economic redistribution. Unless we're talking about paying someone for a peace treaty - like General Petraeus did with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq - most diplomacy is "the art of relating states to each other by agreement rather than by the exercise of force." Of course, that's the view of the renowned liberal Henry Kissinger, so shouldn't be taken in any way seriously.
However, there is a connection between such seemingly disparate issues as workers rights, environmental sustainability, a progressive income tax and gay marriage. What all these areas of concern are based upon is a moral sense of equality and fairness. Workers are small players in a larger financial system; by helping them join together in unions to collectively bargain with their employer it helps to level the playing field. For centuries the natural world has been used only for its supply of cheap resources or as a waste dump; now that the full picture of this human impact has been revealed we must advocate for our collective future.
Issues of civil rights, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights or animal rights; all fall under the broad category of nurturing a society based around notions of equality. The assumption about human nature inherent in the liberal worldview is that fairness and equality can ultimately be achieved and that our innate character is both flexible as it is fundamentally decent. Liberals therefore assume that the social ills that plague our society - unemployment, crime, racism, homophobia - are all moral issues that can be resolved by improving the environment where these problems prevail.
In other words, our "deepest disagreements" are that conservatives think human nature is fixed and a problem to be guarded against while liberals think human nature is flexible and that experience either corrupts or refines. Conservative commentator Thomas Sowell calls these the "Tragic" or "Utopian" worldviews while liberal cognitive scientist George Lakoff refers to them as the "Strict Father" or "Nurturing Parent" traditions. To put these same categories into religious terms, where a conservative would thump the pulpit preaching dominion, a liberal would organize the poor around the cross of liberation theology.
What's important to point out, of course, is that whatever the conservative or liberal assumptions about human nature may be, they have no bearing on what human nature actually is - something that political theorists often forget. The father of political science, Thomas Hobbes, justified monarchy based on his assumption that humans in a "state of nature" (what we would now call indigenous societies) lived a bestial existence that was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Ever since then appeals to a human nature of this sort have been used as an excuse for all manner of draconian policies to maintain order. That there have now been three and a half centuries of research in anthropology and biology on this very question doesn't seem to have filtered down yet to the level of politics.
