The idea that a person's political views reveal his true character now pervades significant swaths of our society, cutting across traditional political divisions.

The positions we hold on the political issues of the day are indeed moral in nature. How the notion that it is somehow impermissible to "legislate morality" could have ever arisen in the first place, much less gained the traction among so many that it did, remains a mystery to me, for the civil association that we have come to enjoy is a moral association, ideally an association whose members — citizens — are related in terms of laws that order their conduct while remaining indifferent to the content of their self-chosen engagements. There is no law that isn't of moral import, whether it be positive (morally acceptable) or negative (immoral).

But the particularly invidious idea that it is, ultimately, a person's political views that reveal his true character now pervades significant swaths of our society, cutting across traditional political divisions. For large numbers of people of a leftist persuasion, the good person is an "activist" who tirelessly wages war against the various forces of oppression — "racism," "sexism," "homophobia," "classism," "xenophobia," "imperialism," etc. — that have historically characterized Western civilization generally and the United States specifically. Opposition to these evils entails support for often radical policies designed to redistribute benefits and burdens in such a way so as to favor the members of groups deemed to have been "historically disadvantaged."

The Right is no less (but certainly no more) susceptible to this proclivity to equate political morality with what we may call morality proper. The good person, from this perspective, opposes abortion and the legalization of drugs, say, while supporting American interventionism abroad. Among those identified with the "religious right," especially, this phenomenon is salient. The good, and even holy, person is he whose judgment is both doctrinally and politically sound.

That one's political convictions disclose something about a person's character I take to be undeniably correct; it is the notion that they reveal everything there is to know about one's character that I find both false and dangerous.

That it is false is readily born out by our shared experience: there isn't one among us who hasn't encountered, and on more than one occasion, people whose decency compels our acknowledgment even while their politics repels us. In fact, not only isn't a person's politics a function of the entire character, I don't think that it expresses even much of it.

To substantiate this contention, I offer an example from my own experience. For the last seven years or so, I have been a regular at a Border's bookstore down the road from my home. Indeed, without exaggeration it can be said with some truth that I all but attended graduate school in its cafe. I've made quite a few acquaintances during my "tenure" there, one of the most memorable of whom is a guy named "Mike" who I met about a year ago. Though registered as an Independent, Mike's political sympathies clearly lie with the Democrat Party, a fact that he doesn't try to conceal. While it certainly can't be said with any justice that Mike is a hard leftist, he is a fan (though doubtless a qualified one) of Barack Obama. Furthermore, and unlike both the President and his supporters, Mike once honestly admitted to being a "socialist."

Yet in spite of our often wildly divergent political convictions, not only can Mike and I mutually engage in civil discourse over the issues of the day but, more importantly for present purposes, he has proven himself a real friend to me. Although his wife is suffering from inoperable cancer and they have two young children to care for, while my wife and I were making preparations for the birth of our son some months ago Mike sacrificed what little time he had available in order to lend us some invaluable assistance. He refused to accept money when I offered it, suggesting, rather, that I just buy him a coffee the next time I saw him at the bookstore. Even this, though, was apparently just an attempt to appease me, for when I did see him he always already had a coffee in hand and insisted that he had no appetite for any of the pastries that I proposed to purchase for him.

Not that it could be missed, but I state my point directly: Mike is a fundamentally decent human being, a man who remains unwaveringly optimistic as he thoroughly supports his wife in her battle against cancer, even while caring for his children and supplying help to a guy he has known only from his episodic stops at the local bookstore. This diagnosis of Mike's character I would be willing to defend even unto death. At the same time, it is to this very juncture that I am just as willing to combat his politics.

Mike, while being, I hope, appreciative of my appraisal of his character, may nevertheless take issue with what he reads as my suggestion that it is inconsistent with his political orientation. Indeed, few people of any political persuasion are likely to think that it is at odds with who they take themselves to be as individual persons. But the incongruence to which I here speak pertains not to a discrepancy between one's own judgments regarding the worth of one's political morality, on the one hand, and, on the other, the value of one's character. Much less, does it pertain to an "objective" reality alleged to exist independently of and prior to the formation of our judgments, two modulations of being, say, an ideal political-morality that is intrinsically immoral versus an ideal character type that is intrinsically praiseworthy. Rather, the only inconsistency to which I draw the reader's attention is that which obtains between our evaluative determinations, those of our verdicts that speak to others' politics, and those of them that relate to their character.

Yet identifying political morality with personal moral virtue is also dangerous. Endorsing positions on political issues isn't difficult at all. Defending those positions can be difficult, but even this isn't remotely as challenging as genuinely aspiring to cultivate in oneself those character-developing habits that we know as the virtues. Think about it: of two possible courses of action, (1) affirming from an altar or college classroom podium, say, "Social Justice," and (2) spending time on one's day off to feed the hungry at a local soup kitchen, which is easier? For that matter, isn't it infinitely easier to proclaim a belief in "universal healthcare" than it is even to so much as acknowledge the very possibility that one acted unjustly toward a friend, relative, spouse, or acquaintance, to say nothing of conceding the injustice and acting to rectify it? 

Once people embrace the notion that they can be redeemed and perfected through their subscription to some political morality or other, they will be that much less likely to feel the need to seek virtue. As a result, the many non-political relationships that make the person who he or she is and which constitute the stuff of which everyday life consists, those institutions like the family and local community — what Edmund Burke referred to as "the little platoons" — that stand between the individual and the State, will erode along with the person's character of which they are the indispensable preconditions.

Certainly a person's political views reflect to some extent a person's character. But we must never forget that, in the final analysis, political morality is not and can never be a substitute for moral virtue.