Welcome to Episode 372 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. I've been mentioning that I have an exciting announcement coming up, and you will get it next week, Monday, March night, when I release a free tool that will help you to lead as a non-anxious presence, personally and professionally. Stay tuned for the details. If you're new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes. You can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com, where you can find out about the books that I've written, the courses I offer, my coaching practice, and speaking engagements. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter there or at the link in the show notes. Finally, if you would like to support my work for as little as $5 a month, you You can get more information at the link in the show notes.

Thanks in advance for your consideration. Now, without further ado, here is episode 372 of Family System's Take on Moral Foundations Theory Part 2 of Two. If you haven't listened to part one of this episode, I encourage you to do that first because that's where I cover the basics of moral foundations theory from a family system's perspective. In this episode, I'm going to look at each of the foundations and go over them from the perspective of our political polarization in the United States. I would say this probably applies to most Western nations. I don't want to make a broad application, but that is my guess. As you've heard me say before, I may be wrong about this. Also, if you haven't watched the TED Talk by Jonathan Hyte that I linked in the show notes, I think it's worth doing because his insight on political polarization from a moral foundation's theory lens will help you understand this episode even better. What I'm going to do today is go through each of the foundations and show how liberals and Conservatives view them differently and how this contributes to political polarization. The first foundation, the Care/Harm Foundation, focuses on preventing the suffering of others.

This is central for liberals, and Conservatives don't agree with this, but it's not paramount. Conservatives generally share the intuition that cruelty is wrong and compassion is good, but they balance this foundation alongside others, such as loyalty, authority, and purity, so preventing harm is one moral priority among several rather than the dominant one. This difference doesn't mean Conservatives value care less. It means they interpret moral situations through a wider set of considerations, while Liberals tend to treat the alleviation of suffering as the overriding moral imperative that should guide policy, social norms, and interpersonal behavior. Based on this, Liberals and Conservatives view the Minneapolis ice crack town through the Care/Harm Foundation in different ways because they focus on different kinds of harm and different people as the ones being harmed. Liberals emphasize the potential suffering of undocumented and/ legal immigrants and their families, fear, family separation, community trauma, and the chilling effect on people seeking medical care, schooling, reporting crimes, even going to work, to name a few. So the crackdown appears as an action that inflicts harm on vulnerable neighbors. Many Conservatives, while not indifferent to suffering, would be more likely to locate harm in the breakdown of legal order or perceived threats to community safety.

From this angle, enforcing immigration law prevents harm by upholding rules, maintaining predictability, and protecting citizens. Both groups are using the same moral foundation, but liberals tend to center the immediate human impact on those targeted, while Conservatives tend to center the broader social impact of not enforcing the law, leading each side to see different victims and a different form of harm at stake. The Fairness Cheating Foundation centers on our instinct for justice and reciprocity. Liberals and Conservatives tend to apply this foundation differently in general because they begin with different intuitions about what fairness is and who is most vulnerable to being cheated. Liberals usually emphasize equality based fairness, where the moral question is whether everyone is treated with the same dignity, opportunity, and protection. Cheating is understood as exploiting or disadvantages people who already have less power or fewer resources. On the other Conservatives more often emphasize proportionality-based fairness, where the moral question is whether people receive outcomes that match their actions. Cheating is understood as gaining benefits you haven't earned or avoiding consequences you don't deserve. These two fairness logics lead each side to focus on different victims. Liberals look for people being unfairly burdened or excluded, while Conservatives look for people who are getting benefits they don't deserve.

It leads them to see different kinds of moral violations in the same situation. The result is not disagreement about whether fairness matters, but disagreement about what fairness requires in practice and which kinds of cheating are most morally urgent to prevent. To liberals, the Minneapolis Ice Crackdown looks unfair because it targets a vulnerable group with disproportionate consequences while offering no comparable burden to others. For Conservatives, the crackdown is not an act of cheating, but a correction, ensuring that those who follow immigration laws are not disadvantaged by those who do not. The high-profile Somali daycare fraud case fed this intuition. Both sides are using the same moral foundation, but Liberals see the crackdown as an unfair punishment of people already at risk, while Conservatives see it as fair enforcement of rules that prevents others from gaining an unearned advantage. The Loyalty Betrayal Foundation captures our evolutionary instinct to form committed groups and protect them. According to Haight, The left tends toward Universalism and away from Nationalism, so it often has trouble connecting to voters who rely on the Loyalty Foundation. This foundation shapes reactions to Minneapolis by shifting the moral spotlight from harm or fairness to the question of which group someone is expected to stand with and what counts as crossing a line.

For many Conservatives, loyalty is tied to the nation, its laws, and the people who enforce them. Supporting ICE is framed as standing with our nation and resisting those who undermine it. From this angle, undocumented immigrants are seen as outside the core moral circle, and those who obstruct enforcement neighbors filming agents, city leaders criticizing the raids, activists offering sanctuary, can be interpreted as unpatriotic and disloyal. Many liberals, by contrast, define loyalty around community, inclusion and solidarity with vulnerable neighbors. The moral in-group is the local community itself, especially those at risk. From this perspective, the crackdown looks like a betrayal of shared values and shared humanity, and resisting ICE becomes an act of loyalty to the people who live, work, and raise families in the city. The same event becomes a test of allegiance, but each side is loyal to a different us, which means each side sees the other as betraying something essential. The Authority Subversion Foundation reflects our long history of living in hierarchical groups where stability depended on recognizing roles, respecting leaders, and preserving traditions that kept the group coordinated. This is foundational to Conservatives, whereas Liberals tend to find themselves opposing authority and hierarchy.

Liberals are more likely to interpret the crackdown as an abuse of state power, where the moral danger lies in agents overreaching, traumatizing communities and violating norms of humane treatment. Conservatives are more likely to interpret the crackdown as rightful enforcement of immigration law, where the moral danger lies in people undermining officers, resisting arrest, or delegitimizing federal authority. The Purity Degradation Foundation is rooted in our evolutionary sensitivity to contamination, both physical and symbolic. Conservatives tend to focus on sexual purity and the sanctity of life, whereas, liberals tend to focus on the environment and personal health. I'm going to go in a different direction on this one, as applying this to Minneapolis is very similar to the other foundations. Some would argue that, Minneapolis and the immigration crackdown in general is about racial purity, and I believe that may be true for the extreme right, but I'm not willing to make that generalization for all Conservatives. I'll come back to that in a bit. But another example here is vaccinations. Many Conservatives experience vaccine mandates or novel biomechanical interventions as a bodily or communal contamination that threatens natural purity, while many Liberals experience refusal to vaccinate as the true source of degradation, an act that endangers vulnerable people and pollutes the social fabric by allowing preventable disease to spread.

An interesting and related area is the Make America Healthy Again movement, where liberals and Conservatives overlap in their opposition to ultra-processed foods, food dies in additives, excess sugar, etc. Both would argue that these degrade the purity of personal health and look to government to intervene against corporate food systems. Finally, the liberty Country Oppression Foundation is about our instinct to protect personal freedom and push back against anything that feels controlling, restrictive, or unfair. Liberals want liberty for the marginalized. Conservatives want freedom from government overreach. This foundation helps to explain why Minneapolis produced such opposite moral reactions because each side identified a different actor whose freedom was being threatened. Many Conservatives interpreted the crackdown as an expression of collective liberty, the right of a political community to enforce its own laws and maintain secure boundaries. In this view, unauthorized immigration represents a form of rule-breaking that constrains the nation's ability to govern itself. And local resistance to ICE looks like an attempt to oppressed the community by preventing it from exercising its rightful authority. The moral danger is the erosion of the nation's freedom to set and enforce its own rules. So federal action appears not as domination, but as the restoration of autonomy.

Liberals, by contrast, apply liberty oppression to the individuals and neighborhoods directly affected by the raids. From this perspective, armed federal agents entering homes, workplaces, and public spaces represent a form of state domination that strips people, regardless of legal status, of safety, agency, and the freedom to live without fear. The crackdown looks like an oppressive overreach of government power, and community resistance becomes a defense of local liberty against coercion. The same event generates opposite moral intuitions because each side centers a different a victim of oppression. Conservatives see the nation's freedom under threat, while liberals see the freedom of individuals and communities being violated. My sense is that the difference in how the two sides viewed Minneapolis using the moral Foundations, held up until the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretty. At that point, many moderates and even some Conservatives started to view the crackdown as harmful, unfair, and oppressive. My question is, would opinions have changed if good and pretty were not white? My guess is your answer to that question might depend on whether you are liberal or conservative, as well as whether you believe the crackdown is about racial purity. Now that I've gotten you riled up, I'm going to remind you that non-anxious leaders are able to say what they believe while giving others the freedom to disagree.

A large majority of people are well-intentioned, yet disagree vehemently on many, many issues, and we are We're not going to get anywhere when we are in a conflict of wills. The only way that we're going to move forward is to find a different way. The question is, how can understanding moral foundations theory through a family system's lens help? A family system's perspective on moral foundation theory helps us to understand reactivity patterns rather than look at fixed ideological differences. In any anxious system, whether a family, a congregation, an organization, or even a polarized nation, people narrow down to the foundations that feel most protective to them. Liberals tend to lean harder on care, equality-based fairness, and liberty for the vulnerable when anxiety rises. Conservatives tend to lean harder on authority, loyalty, and proportionality-based fairness. None of these instincts are wrong. They're just different different ways a system tries to maintain safety and coherence. When anxiety rises, each side becomes more fused with its preferred foundations and more suspicious of the others, which makes the other side's moral logic feel not just different, but dangerous. Polarization grows not because people are immoral, but because the system is anxious and each group is doubling down on the moral tools that help them feel less threatened.

Reducing polarization then is not about persuading people to adopt different moral foundations, but about lowering reactivity so that more foundations can come online at once. In family systems terms, the goal is to increase self-differentiation. That is, the ability to stay connected while staying grounded in one's own values. Practically speaking, this means helping people name the values they are operating from. It's almost certain that they don't know about moral foundations theory, but that's okay. You can still use the framework by asking curious, non-reactive questions. Curiosity interrupts the automatic threat response and creates emotional space for multiple moral intuitions to coexist. Instead of asking about their moral foundations, ask about their values. What value feels most important to you in this situation? What feels at stake for you here? What would a good outcome protect or preserve? Your goal here is to identify which intuition has been activated without naming them. Once you've done that, you can try to translate whatever foundation they are naming into plain language values. For example, you can ask if you think it's the care/harm foundation, who might get hurt? Or if you think it's the fairness/cheating foundation, what feels fair or unfair here?

Or the loyalty/betrayal foundation, whose trust feels most important to honor here? If it's the authority/subversion foundation, Degradation, what rules or roles matter here? If it's Purity/degression, what feels sacred or needs protecting? And if it's Liberty/oppression, whose freedom feels threatened? I'll note here that if you're familiar with nonviolent communication, this is getting at the feeling and need. If they can identify the feeling, you can help them identify the need, which is a moral foundation. For example, if during During the last administration, they were concerned about more open borders and they say, This policy is destroying our country, you can say, Sounds like you're worried that something important is being lost. What do you believe needs to be protected? Their answer will help you identify which intuition has been activated. If they say, Illegal immigrants come here, take our jobs, and receive benefits, and many citizens are struggling, then this would be the fairness moral foundation, especially in terms of proportionality. Your response could be, So this feels unfair to you. Another example would be if somebody was upset about Minneapolis and they say, This policy is destroying our country. The same response applies. Sounds like you're worried something important is being lost.

What do you believe needs to be protected? They might respond, People's freedoms are being trampled and the most vulnerable are suffering. This would be both the harm and liberty foundations, and your response could be, So this feels harmful and oppressive. The idea here is to stay emotionally connected and to hear which of their moral foundations are feeling threatened. Ironically, this can help them feel less threatened. When people feel less threatened, they can integrate foundations they normally underuse. Liberals can better appreciate loyalty and proportionality. Conservatives can better appreciate care and equality. The system becomes less polarized, not because anyone changed sides, but because the emotional field is calmer and people can access a fuller range of moral reasoning. How does this happen? It's important for you to be able to express your values in a non-anxious way. In the first example, you might say, I hear that fairness is important to you. My concern is the harm that so many people experience from the poverty and violence in their own country. I like to believe that our country is built on people escaping harm and coming to a land of opportunity. I guess it's complicated. For the second example, I'm going to substitute safety instead of care and freedom instead of liberty because I think they sound more natural.

But you might say something like, I hear that safety and Individual freedoms are important to you. My concern is that the rule of law feels threatened because so many people are living here illegally. I guess it's complicated. This conversation doesn't just expand everyone's range of moral functioning It acknowledges that the challenges we face don't have a quick fix. In a failure of nerve, Edwin Friedmann identified the need for a quick fix as a symptom of a chronically anxious system. Imagine more people had conversations like this. Maybe we could actually work on finding solutions where illegal immigrants who contribute to society and the economy have a path to legal residence. And businesses that aren't able to hire workers from the resident workforce have a legal means of finding immigrant labor. This is just one issue, but nearly all the issues that face us are complicated and challenging. Anxiety makes finding solutions impossible. Self-differentiation, a non-anxious presence, makes it possible to work through that. It's process, not content, and it's not going to be easy. Understanding moral foundations theory through a family systems lens helps you to see people's anxiety as emotional language rather than ideological positions.

The work is to translate, not to win. Identifying the foundation behind someone's concern reduces misinterpretation, and affirming the legitimacy of their viewpoint lowers anxiety. Once the anxiety drops, people can hear each other again. Over time, this builds a culture where disagreement doesn't automatically trigger cutoff or escalation because the system has learned to tolerate difference without interpreting it as a betrayal or as danger. In that sense, bridging political divides is less about changing minds and more about changing the emotional climate so that minds can stay open. This is our work as non-anxious leaders. That's it for episode 372. A little bit longer, but I had to try to cover everything and give you some examples. Anyway, don't forget, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com, and you can find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who would benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks in advance for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.