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Not that psychological insight and moral judgment are mutually exclusive. John le Carre is extraordinarily skillful at showing the psychological affinity between the British master spy Smiley and his KGB nemesis Karla. But in the end, there is no mistaking Le Carre's view of the worthiness of their respective enterprises. One can understand and still judge, so long as one is not tempted to understand everything.
Finally, perhaps the deepest cause of moral confusion is the state of language itself, language that has been bleached of its moral distinctions, turned neutral, value-free, "nonjudgmental." When that happens, moral discourse becomes difficult, moral distinctions impossible and moral debate incomprehensible. If abortion is simply "termination of pregnancy," the moral equivalent of, say, removing a tumor, how to account for a movement of serious people dedicated to its abolition? If homosexuality is merely a "sexual preference"—if a lover's sex is as much a matter of taste as, say, hair color (or having it butter-side up or butter-side down)—then why the to-do over two men dancing together at Disneyland? But there is a fuss, because there is a difference. One can understand neither with language that refuses to make distinctions.
Using unflattened, living language does not commit one to an antiabortion, antigay or antiwelfare position. One can argue forcefully for free choice in abortion, rights for homosexuals and aid to fatherless families without pretending that the issues here are merely clinical, aesthetic or statistical. They are moral too. But to make, or even follow, moral arguments, we need language that has not yet obliterated any trace of distinctions.
And yet the language of moral equivalence has become routine. Calling something the moral equivalent of war, for example, is a favorite presidential technique for summoning the nation to a cause. That metaphor, coined by William James, was last pressed into service by Jimmy Carter to gird us for the energy crisis. Before that, we have had wars on poverty, crime, cancer and even war itself (World War I). Now, Mr. Carter knew that turning down thermostats and risking lives in combat make disproportionate claims on the citizenry. Indeed, he sought to exploit that disproportion to rally the nation to the unglamorous task of conserving energy. The idea was to make the notion of conserving energy more important. What went unconsidered was what that kind of linguistic maneuver does to the idea of going to war. The problem with summoning a great moral theme in the service of a minor one—the problem with declaring moral equivalence when it does not exist—is what that does to the great idea. In a dangerous world Americans might some day be called upon to go to war, and if that happens, the difference between reaching for a thermostat and reaching for a gun will become painfully apparent.