Los cambios suceden en la antesala de los comicios presidenciales de 2024 y son parte de un patrón de desafíos a las instituciones democráticas en el hemisferio occidental.Los legisladores mexicanos modificaron el miércoles el sistema electoral del país, dando un golpe a la institución que supervisa las votaciones y que hace dos décadas ayudó a sacar al país de un régimen unipartidista.Los cambios, que reducirán el personal del organismo electoral, disminuirán su autonomía y limitarán su capacidad de descalificar a los candidatos que quebranten leyes electorales,son los más significativos de una serie de medidas adoptadas por el presidente de México que socavan las frágiles instituciones independientes, y forman parte de un patrón de desafíos a las normas democráticas en todo el hemisferio occidental.El presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador, cuyo partido controla el Congreso junto con sus aliados, argumenta que las medidas ahorrarán millones de dólares y harán que las votaciones sean más eficientes. Las nuevas reglas también buscan facilitar que los mexicanos que viven en el extranjero emitan su voto en línea.Pero los críticos —entre ellos algunas personas que han trabajado con el presidente— dicen que los cambios son un intento de debilitar un pilar clave de la democracia de México. El líder del partido del presidente en el Senado ha calificado de inconstitucional la medida.Ahora se avecina otra prueba: se espera que en los próximos meses la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, que se ha convertido en el blanco frecuente de la ira del presidente, evalúe una impugnación a las medidas.Si los cambios se mantienen, las autoridades electorales mexicanas afirman que podría dificultarse la realización de elecciones libres y justas, incluida la contienda presidencial clave del próximo año.“Lo que está en juego es si vamos a tener un Estado de derecho y una división de poderes”, dijo Jorge Alcocer Villanueva, quien trabajó anteriormente en la Secretaría de Gobernación durante el gobierno de López Obrador. “Eso es lo que quedaría en riesgo, la certeza de que el voto va a ser respetado”.El organismo de supervisión, llamado Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE), ganó reconocimiento internacional por facilitar elecciones limpias en México, allanando el camino para que la oposición ganara la presidencia en el año 2000 tras décadas de un gobierno dominado por un solo partido.Manifestantes marcharon en distintas ciudades del país contra los cambios electorales propuestos por López Obrador.Luis Cortes/ReutersSin embargo, desde que perdió unas elecciones presidenciales en 2006 por menos del 1 por ciento de los votos, López Obrador ha sostenido en repetidas ocasiones, sin aportar pruebas, que el instituto ha perpetrado en realidad fraude electoral, una afirmación que se asemeja a las teorías de conspiración de fraude electoral propagadas en Estados Unidos y Brasil.El escepticismo del líder mexicano sobre las elecciones de 2006 fue incluso retomado el año pasado por el embajador estadounidense en México, Ken Salazar, quien declaró a The New York Times que él también dudaba de la legitimidad de los resultados.El principal asesor para América Latina del presidente Joe Biden aclaró posteriormente que el gobierno reconocía el resultado de aquella contienda. La embajada de Estados Unidos en México ha estado enviando informes a Washington en los que se evalúan las posibles amenazas a la democracia en el país, según tres funcionarios estadounidenses que no estaban autorizados a hablar públicamente.Pero si bien algunos legisladores han expresado su preocupación por los cambios en materia electoral, el gobierno de Biden ha dicho poco sobre el tema en público.El gobierno estadounidense considera poco ventajoso provocar a López Obrador y confía en que las instituciones mexicanas sean capaces de defenderse, dijeron varios funcionarios estadounidenses.El presidente mexicano sigue siendo extremadamente popular, y Morena, su partido, va a la cabeza en las encuestas de las elecciones presidenciales de 2024. Es muy probable que uno de los protegidos políticos de López Obrador quede al frente de la candidatura presidencial del partido.Esa dinámica ha ocasionado que muchos en México se pregunten: ¿por qué impulsar cambios que podrían suscitar dudas sobre la legitimidad de las elecciones que se espera que favorezcan a su partido?“Lo que se buscaba era ahorros”, dijo el vocero del gobierno, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, en una entrevista, “sin afectar el funcionamiento del INE” . El presidente tiene una política de austeridad de “cero déficit”, comentó, y preferiría gastar los fondos públicos en “inversión social, la salud, educación, infraestructura”.Venta de artesanías en la marcha a favor de López Obrador en Ciudad de México en noviembreLuis Antonio Rojas para The New York TimesLópez Obrador ha dicho que quiere agilizar una burocracia inflada.“Se va a mejorar el sistema de elecciones”, dijo López Obrador en diciembre. “Se logran compactar algunas áreas para que se haga más con menos”.Muchos coinciden en que el gasto podría recortarse, pero argumentan que los cambios adoptados el miércoles afectan la base de la función más elemental del organismo electoral: supervisar el voto.Los funcionarios electorales argumentan que las modificaciones los obligarán a eliminar miles de puestos de trabajo, incluida buena parte de las personas que organizan las elecciones y gestionan la instalación de casillas electorales a nivel local en todo el país. Los cambios también limitan el control de la agencia sobre sus propios gastos y la capacidad del instituto para inhabilitar a candidatos por infracciones de gastos de campaña.Uuc Kib Espadas, consejo del INE, dijo que las modificaciones podrían tener como resultado “que no se instale un número significativo de casillas privando de su derecho al voto a miles o cientos de miles de personas”.Ramírez Cuevas calificó dichas inquietudes como “una exageración” y dijo que “no va haber despido masivo” en el INE.Pero el presidente mexicano no ha disimulado su desdén hacia la institución que su partido ahora tiene en la mira.Luego de que las autoridades electorales confirmaron su derrota en 2006, López Obrador impulsó a miles de sus seguidores a manifestarse en protestas que paralizaron la capital durante semanas.Al final pidió a sus seguidores salir de las calles, pero nunca dejó de hablar de lo que él llama “el fraude” de 2006.López Obrador rodeado de seguidores en un mitin en noviembre.Luis Antonio Rojas para The New York Times“El presidente de México tiene una especie de resentimiento contra la autoridad electoral”, dijo Alcocer Villanueva, el exfuncionario de la Secretaría de Gobernación. “Ese resentimiento lo hace actuar de una manera irracional en este terreno”.López Obrador no siempre pareció decidido a reducir al órgano electoral.Alcocer Villanueva contó que cuando fue coordinador de asesores del secretario de Gobernación, de 2018 a 2021, él y su equipo propusieron analizar posibles cambios electorales, pero el presidente decía que no estaba entre sus prioridades.Luego, el organismo de control electoral empezó a ser un obstáculo para la agenda del presidente.En 2021, el INE inhabilitó a dos candidatos del partido gobernante por no declarar aportes de campaña relativamente pequeños, decisiones que algunas personas al interior de la institución cuestionaron.“Era una sanción desproporcionada”, dijo Espadas Ancona.Pronto, el presidente empezó a dedicar mucho más tiempo a hablar del organismo electoral, por lo general de forma negativa. Para 2022 mencionaba a la institución en sus conferencias matutinas más del doble de veces que en 2019, según el instituto.Ha señalado al organismo como “podrido” y “antidemocrático” y convirtió en blanco de sus ataques al líder del instituto —un abogado llamado Lorenzo Córdova— a quien el presidente ha calificado como alguien “sin principios, sin ideales, un farsante”.Desde que no logró llegar a la presidencia en 2006, por una diferencia de menos del 1 por ciento de los votos, López Obrador ha atacado a las autoridades electorales.Luis Antonio Rojas para The New York TimesCórdova, quien fue nombrado por el Congreso de México, ha tomado protagonismo en su propia defensa, al responder directamente al presidente en un torrente de entrevistas en medios de comunicación y conferencias de prensa. “Es una estrategia política muy clara y evidente: vender al INE como una autoridad parcial, sesgada”, dijo Córdova en una entrevista, utilizando las siglas de la institución. “¿Cuál es nuestro dilema como autoridad?, ¿cómo manejamos esto? Si no decimos nada, públicamente, estamos convalidando el dicho del presidente”.Los críticos del presidente han aplaudido la disposición de Córdova a enfrentarlo. Pero algunos en México se preguntan si Córdova ha encontrado el equilibrio adecuado.“El tono del presidente del INE debe ser con más discreción y de no responder con tanta víscera y con tanto coraje”, dijo Luis Carlos Ugalde, quien dirigió la agencia de 2003 a 2007 , y añadió: “Genera que del otro lado, del lado de Morena, haya más ganas, más ganas de atacar, de destruir al instituto”.Córdova se mantuvo firme en su enfoque.“Es muy fácil juzgar desde fuera”, dijo Córdova. “Al que le ha tocado conducir esta institución en el peor momento he sido yo”.El mandato de Córdova termina en abril. El Congreso, controlado por el partido del presidente, elegirá a cuatro nuevos consejeros para el organismo electoral.Oscar Lopez More

No woman with his résumé would have a chance of becoming New York’s mayor. More

Taro Kono has by far the highest poll numbers of any candidate to lead the governing Liberal Democrats. But party elders don’t think so highly of him.TOKYO — If popularity were the deciding factor, there would be a clear front-runner to become the next prime minister of Japan.Polls have found that the public favors Taro Kono, the cabinet minister overseeing Japan’s coronavirus vaccine rollout, by at least two to one in the race to lead the governing Liberal Democratic Party — which, in effect, is the race to become prime minister. His Twitter following of 2.4 million dwarfs those of his three rivals combined.But in the back rooms where Japanese political decisions are made, Mr. Kono, 58, is not nearly as well liked. His reputation as the Liberal Democrats’ most outspoken nonconformist and his left-leaning views on social issues put him out of step with the party’s conservative elders.Those people will have considerable sway on Wednesday as the Liberal Democrats choose a successor to Yoshihide Suga, the unpopular current prime minister and party leader, who said this month that he would step aside. Whoever takes his place will lead the party into a general election that must be held by the end of November.In past party leadership elections, unity has made the winner a foregone conclusion. But this time, the political horse trading has sometimes seemed at odds with popular sentiment, even as the public has expressed dissatisfaction with the party’s leadership on the pandemic and the economy. That disconnect partly reflects complacency among the Liberal Democrats, who have been in power for all but a few years since 1955 and seem confident that they will win the general election no matter who they choose.“Right now, their thinking is that they can’t lose to the opposition,” said Masato Kamikubo, a professor of political science at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Yoshihide Suga, center, said this month that he would step aside as prime minister and the Liberal Democrats’ leader.Pool photo by Kim Kyung-HoonMr. Kono differs from his rivals in style as well as substance. Unlike a long string of stodgy Liberal Democratic politicians who seemed to have little interest in inspiring the public, he assiduously courts popular opinion.After Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, made him foreign minister in 2017, Mr. Kono developed an avid Twitter following in both Japanese and English, with playful posts about food, his prowess with Japanese children’s toys and meetings with cartoon mascots.As the minister in charge of vaccines, he has sometimes responded personally to Twitter users’ questions. Fumie Sakamoto, an infection control manager at St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo, said she believed his personal touch may have helped ease public fears about the vaccines.“He’s always been willing to communicate about vaccination in a positive and easy-to-understand manner,” Ms. Sakamoto said. After a slow start in the first half of the year, more than half of the population in Japan is now fully vaccinated, putting it ahead of the United States and many other countries around the Pacific Rim.But other issues have put Mr. Kono on the wrong side of his party’s power brokers.He has repeatedly voiced his opposition to nuclear power, a sacred cow for the Liberal Democrats. He now supports same-sex marriage and a proposal to change a law requiring married couples to share a surname for legal purposes — positions that are popular with the public but opposed by the party’s influential right wing.Mr. Kono, center left, at a Tokyo vaccination site. As the minister overseeing Japan’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout, he has engaged directly with Twitter users.Yuri Kageyama/Associated PressMr. Abe, who resigned last year because of ill health, has backed Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative, for the leadership. Ms. Takaichi, who would be Japan’s first female prime minister, has strong backing from the right wing of the party, but her poll numbers are low. Another woman in the leadership race, Seiko Noda, 61, has little support from either the public or the party.Many Liberal Democratic members of Parliament consider Fumio Kishida, 64, a moderate with tepid support in the polls, to be the safest choice, according to media tallies of lawmakers.Mr. Kono, whose father and grandfather were both Liberal Democratic lawmakers, has long made it clear that he wants to be prime minister. But he did not follow a traditional route to power. He left a place at one of Japan’s most prestigious private universities, Keio, to study at Georgetown in Washington instead.Mr. Kono’s polished English and extensive travel experience as foreign minister would make him a welcome choice for prime minister among Japan’s allies, political analysts said. “For Washington, he would be the most comfortable person,” said Shihoko Goto, a senior associate for Northeast Asia at the Wilson Center in Washington.On China, Mr. Kono does not invoke the kind of hawkish rhetoric that Ms. Takaichi and Mr. Kishida have been using during the campaign, but he would be likely to maintain the party’s policies on military cooperation with the United States, Australia and India. Sanae Takaichi has low poll numbers, but former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other conservatives support her for the leadership.Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGiven his work on diplomatic and military issues — Mr. Kono also served as Mr. Abe’s defense minister — he is “probably the best-prepared person for the prime ministership in that sense,” said Narushige Michishita, vice president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. But some say his confidence has led to arrogance and even impetuosity. Last year, as defense minister, he decided with little consultation to cancel a plan to buy an American missile defense system, angering Japanese military leaders who heard about the decision after the fact.“Maybe he’s too American,” said Kunihiko Miyake, a former diplomat who has been an adviser to Mr. Suga. “He’s very direct, honest, sometimes blunt,” Mr. Miyake added. “And sometimes so self-righteous that nobody can catch up or nobody feels willing to help.”Mr. Kono, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has a reputation for being short-tempered with Japanese bureaucrats. He recently crusaded against the fax machines that are still used in government offices, making waves by taking on one of the shibboleths of the bureaucracy.In an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper, Mr. Kono acknowledged that he might need to speak more carefully. “However, I do not intend to mince words when it comes to pointing out the fallacies of bureaucratic thinking that is not attuned to reality,” he said.On Twitter, he has also become rather notorious as the Japanese politician most likely to block his critics — so much so that he spawned a hashtag, #IwasblockedbyKonoTaro, in Japanese. When asked about the practice in an interview with TBS, a broadcaster, he defended it.“I don’t feel the need to have a conversation with people I don’t know who slander me,” he said.A nuclear plant in Mihama, Japan. Mr. Kono has spoken out against nuclear power, but he supports restarting long-idled plants as part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions.Kyodo News, via Associated PressMasahiko Abe, a professor of English and American literature at the University of Tokyo, said he was blocked by Mr. Kono after suggesting that the minister did not understand the government’s policy on university entrance exams.“I don’t mind that he’s sometimes aggressive and even arrogant from time to time,” Mr. Abe said. But, he added, “If he says anything wrong, I think we have the right to correct him.”People who have worked with Mr. Kono said he believed that policy debates were more productive if they were rigorous. “The reason why he understands the discussion is because he is demanding,” said Mika Ohbayashi, a director at the Renewable Energy Institute, a research and advocacy group, who served on a climate change advisory panel with Mr. Kono.As a candidate for the leadership, Mr. Kono has calibrated some of his past positions. Despite his opposition to nuclear power, he said he supported the restart of Japan’s nuclear plants — the vast majority of which have been idled since the triple meltdown in Fukushima 10 years ago — as part of a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.“He is looking at his liabilities and he is trying to figure out how he can cement support within the party,” said Mireya Solís, co-director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Hikari Hida contributed reporting. More

Militia group leader tried to ask Trump to authorize them to stop transfer of powerJustice department alleges Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes called unidentified presidential confidant on January 6 to make request Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia group leader charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, asked an intermediary to get Donald Trump to allow his group to forcibly stop the transfer of power, the justice department has alleged in court papers.The previously unknown phone call with the unidentified individual appears to indicate the Oath Keepers had contacts with at least one person close enough to Trump that Rhodes believed the individual would be a good person to consult with his request.Capitol attack committee requests cooperation from key Republican trioRead moreOnce the Oath Keepers finished storming the Capitol, Rhodes gathered the Oath Keepers leadership at about 5pm and walked down a few blocks to the Phoenix Park hotel in Washington, the justice department said on Wednesday in a statement of offense against Oath Keepers member William Wilson.The group then huddled in a private suite, the justice department said, where Rhodes called an unidentified person on speakerphone and pressed the person to get Trump to authorize them to stop the transfer of power after the Capitol attack had failed to do so.“Wilson heard Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” the document said. “This individual denied Rhodes’ request to speak directly with President Trump.”The extraordinary phone call indicates that Rhodes believed two important points: first, that he was close enough to the Trump confidant that he could openly discuss such a request, and second, that the confidant was close enough to Trump to be able to pass on the message.James Lee Bright, a lawyer for Rhodes, told the Guardian that he was uncertain about who his client called or whether the call took place.The previously unknown phone call surfaced on Wednesday in charging documents against Wilson, the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Oath Keepers, who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding as part of a plea agreement.The statement of offense said that Wilson was involved in efforts to prepare for January 6 with the national leadership of the Oath Keepers, and how Rhodes added Wilson to the “DC OP: Jan 6 21” group chat on the encrypted Signal messaging app.“Rhodes, Wilson, and co-conspirators used this Signal group chat and others to plan for January 6, 2021,” the justice department said.On the morning of the Capitol attack, Rhodes confirmed on the group chat that they had several well equipped QRFs outside DC – a reference to quick reaction forces, that the government said it believes were on standby to deploy to the Capitol with guns and ammunition.At about 2.34pm, the justice department said, Wilson stormed into the Capitol through the upper West Terrace doors as one of the first co-conspirators to breach the building, and by 2.38pm, was helping to pry open the doors to the rotunda from the inside.The seditious conspiracy charge against Wilson – an offense that carries up to 20 years in federal prison – is the latest in a string of recent such indictments to members of the Oath Keepers. Wilson is cooperating with the the justice department in its criminal investigation into January 6.As part of the criminal investigation into January 6, the justice department is also examining connections between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, another militia group, having obtained text messages showing the two groups were in touch before the Capitol attack.The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack also believes the Capitol attack included a coordinated assault perpetrated by the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, the Guardian first reported last month.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS justice systemnewsReuse this content More

I’m a fan of FiveThirtyEight, a website that looks at policy issues from a data-heavy perspective, but everyone publishes a clunker once in a while. In February, FiveThirtyEight ran a piece called “Why Democrats Keep Losing Culture Wars.” The core assertion was that Republicans prevail because a lot of Americans are ignorant about issues like abortion and school curriculum, and they believe the lies the right feeds them. The essay had a very heavy “deplorables are idiots” vibe.Nate Hochman, writing in the conservative National Review, recognized a hanging curve when he saw one and he walloped the piece. He noted that “all the ‘experts’ that the FiveThirtyEight writers cite in their piece are invested in believing that the progressive worldview is the objective one, and that any deviations from it are the result of irrational or insidious impulses in the electorate.”He added: “All this is a perfect example of why the left’s cultural aggression is alienating to so many voters. Progressive elites are plagued by an inability to understand the nature and function of social issues in American life as anything other than a battle between the forces of truth and justice on one side and those of ignorance and bigotry on the other.”There’s a lot of truth to that. The essence of good citizenship in a democratic society is to spend time with those who disagree with you so you can understand their best arguments.But over the last few decades, as Republicans have been using cultural issues to rally support more and more, Democrats have understood what’s going on less and less. Many progressives have developed an inability to see how good and wise people could be on the other side, a lazy tendency to assume that anybody who’s not a social progressive must be a racist or a misogynist, a tendency to think the culture wars are merely a distraction Republican politicians kick up to divert attention from the real issues, like economics — as if the moral health of society was some trivial sideshow.Even worse, many progressives have been blind to their own cultural power. Liberals dominate the elite cultural institutions — the universities, much of the mainstream news media, entertainment, many of the big nonprofits — and many do not seem to understand how infuriatingly condescending it looks when they describe their opponents as rubes and bigots.The Republican Party capitalizes on this. Some days it seems as if this is the only thing the party does. For example, Republican candidates could probably cruise to victory in this fall’s elections just by talking about inflation. Instead, many are doubling down on the sort of cultural issues that helped propel Glenn Youngkin to the governor’s office in Virginia.They’re doing it because many Americans believe the moral fabric of society is fraying, and the Republican messages on this resonate. In a recent Fox News poll, 60 percent of Hispanic respondents favored laws that would bar teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity with students before the fourth grade. Nearly three-quarters of American voters are very or extremely concerned about “what’s taught in public schools.”Documents this year from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recognized that the Republican culture war issues are “alarmingly potent” and that some battleground state voters think the Democrats are “preachy” and “judgmental.”The fact is the culture wars are not a struggle between the enlightened few and the ignorant and bigoted masses. They are a tension between two legitimate moral traditions. Democrats will never prevail on social issues unless they understand the nature of the struggle.In the hurly-burly of everyday life, very few of us think about systemic moral philosophies. But deep down we are formed by moral ecologies we are raised within or choose, systems of thought and feeling that go back centuries. We may think we are making up our own minds about things, but usually our judgments and moral sentiments are shaped by these long moral traditions.In this essay I’m going to try to offer a respectful version of the two rival moral traditions that undergird our morality wars. I’ll try to summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each. I’ll also try to point to the opportunities Democrats now have to create a governing majority on social and cultural matters.***The phrase “moral freedom” captures a prominent progressive moral tradition. It recognizes the individual conscience as the ultimate authority and holds that in a diverse society, each person should have the right to lead her own authentic life and make up her own mind about moral matters. If a woman decides to get an abortion, then we should respect her freedom of choice. If a teenager concludes they are nonbinary, or decides to transition to another gender, then we should celebrate their efforts to live a life that is authentic to who they really are.In this ethos society would be rich with a great diversity of human types.This ethos has a pretty clear sense of right and wrong. It is wrong to try to impose your morality or your religious faith on others. Society goes wrong when it prevents gay people from marrying who they want, when it restricts the choices women can make, when it demeans transgender people by restricting where they can go to the bathroom and what sports they can play after school.This moral freedom ethos has made modern life better in a variety of ways. There are now fewer restrictions that repress and discriminate against people from marginalized groups. Women have more social freedom to craft their own lives and to be respected for the choices they make. People in the L.G.B.T.Q. communities have greater opportunities to lead open and flourishing lives. There’s less conformity. There’s more tolerance for different lifestyles. There’s less repression and more openness about sex. People have more freedom to discover and express their true selves.However, there are weaknesses. The moral freedom ethos puts tremendous emphasis on individual conscience and freedom of choice. Can a society thrive if there is no shared moral order? The tremendous emphasis on self-fulfillment means that all relationships are voluntary. Marriage is transformed from a permanent covenant to an institution in which two people support each other on their respective journeys to self-fulfillment. What happens when people are free to leave their commitments based on some momentary vision of their own needs?If people find their moral beliefs by turning inward, the philosopher Charles Taylor warned, they may lose contact with what he called the “horizons of significance,” the standards of truth, beauty and moral excellence that are handed down by tradition, history or God.A lot of people will revert to what the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre calls “emotivism”: What is morally right is what feels right to me. Emotivism has a tendency to devolve into a bland mediocrity and self-indulgence. If we’re all creating our own moral criteria based on feelings, we’re probably going to grade ourselves on a forgiving curve.Self-created identities are also fragile. We need to have our identities constantly affirmed by others if we are to feel secure. People who live within this moral ecology are going to be hypersensitive to sleights that they perceive as oppression. Politics devolves into identity wars, as different identities seek recognition over the others.The critics of moral freedom say that while it opens up lifestyle choices, it also devolves into what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid modernity.” When everybody defines his own values, the basic categories of life turn fluid. You wind up in a world in which a Supreme Court nominee like Ketanji Brown Jackson has to dodge the seemingly basic question of what a woman is. I don’t blame her. I don’t know how to answer that question anymore, either.Under the sway of the moral freedom ethos, the left has generally won the identity wars but lost the cosmology wars. America has moved left on feminist and L.G.B.T.Q. issues and is much more tolerant of diverse lifestyles. But many Americans don’t quite trust Democrats to tend the moral fabric that binds us all together. They worry that the left threatens our national narratives as well as religious institutions and the family, which are the seedbeds of virtue.***The conservative moral tradition has a very different conception of human nature, the world and how the good society is formed. I’ll call it “you are not your own,” after the recent book by the English professor and Christian author Alan Noble.People who subscribe to this worldview believe that individuals are embedded in a larger and pre-existing moral order in which there is objective moral truth, independent of the knower. As Charles Taylor summarizes the ethos, “independent of my will there is something noble, courageous and hence significant in giving shape to my own life.”In this ethos, ultimate authority is outside the self. For many people who share this worldview, the ultimate source of authority is God’s truth, as revealed in Scripture. For others, the ultimate moral authority is the community and its traditions.We’re in a different moral world here, with emphasis on obedience, dependence, deference and supplication. This moral tradition has a loftier vision of perfect good, but it takes a dimmer view of human nature: Left to their own devices, people will tend to be selfish and shortsighted. They will rebel against the established order and seek autonomy. If a person does not submit to the moral order of the universe — or the community — he may become self-destructive, a slave to his own passions.The healthier life is one lived within limits — limits imposed by God’s commandments, by the customs and sacred truths of a culture and its institutions. These limits on choice root you so you have a secure identity and secure attachments. They enforce habits that slowly turn into virtues.In the “moral freedom” world you have to be free to realize your highest moral potential.In the “you are not your own” world you must be morally formed by institutions before you are capable of handling freedom. In this world there are certain fixed categories. Male and female are essential categories of personhood. In this ethos there are limits on freedom of choice. You don’t get to choose to abort your fetus, because that fetus is not just cells that belong to you. That fetus belongs to that which brings forth life.Researchers Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt and Brian Nosek found that liberals are powerfully moved to heal pain and prevent cruelty. Conservatives, they discovered, are more attuned than liberals to the moral foundations that preserve a stable social order. They highly value loyalty and are sensitive to betrayal. They value authority and are sensitive to subversion.The strengths of this moral tradition are pretty obvious. It gives people unconditional attachments and a series of rituals and practices that morally form individuals.The weaknesses of this tradition are pretty obvious, too. It can lead to rigid moral codes that people with power use to justify systems of oppression. This ethos leads to a lot of othering — people not in our moral order are inferior and can be conquered and oppressed.But the big problem today with the “you are not your own” ethos is that fewer and fewer people believe in it. Fewer and fewer people in the United States believe in God. And more Americans of all stripes have abandoned the submissive, surrendering, dependent concept of the self.This is the ultimate crisis on the right. Many conservatives say there is an objective moral order that demands obedience, but they’ve been formed by America’s prevailing autonomy culture, just like everybody else. In practice, they don’t actually want to surrender obediently to a force outside themselves; they want to make up their own minds. The autonomous self has triumphed across the political spectrum, on the left where it makes sense, and also on the right, where it doesn’t.***Both of these moral traditions have deep intellectual and historical roots. Both have a place in any pluralistic society. Right now, the conservative world looks politically strong, but it is existentially in crisis. Republicans will probably do extremely well in the 2022 midterms. But conservatism, especially Christian conservatism, is coming apart.Conservative Christians feel they are under massive assault from progressive cultural elites. Small-town traditionalists feel their entire way of life is being threatened by globalism and much else. They perceive that they are losing power as a cultural force. Many in the younger generations have little use for their god, their traditional rooted communities and their values.This has produced a moral panic. Consumed by the passion of the culture wars, many traditionalists and conservative Christians have adopted a hypermasculine warrior ethos diametrically opposed to the Sermon on the Mount moral order they claim as their guide. Unable to get people to embrace their moral order through suasion, they now seek to impose their moral order through politics. A movement that claims to make God their god now makes politics god. What was once a faith is now mostly a tribe.This moral panic has divided the traditionalist world, especially the Christian part of it, a division that has, for example, been described in different ways by me, by my Times colleague Ruth Graham and by Tim Alberta in The Atlantic. Millions of Americans who subscribe to the “you are not your own” ethos are appalled by what the Republican Party has become.So is there room in the Democratic Party for people who don’t subscribe to the progressive moral tradition but are appalled by what conservatism has become?First, will Democrats allow people to practice their faith even if some tenets of that faith conflict with progressive principles? For example, two bills in Congress demonstrate that clash. They both would amend federal civil rights law to require fair treatment of L.G.B.T.Q. people in housing, employment and other realms of life. One, the Fairness for All Act, would allow for substantial exceptions for religious institutions. A Catholic hospital, say, wouldn’t be compelled to offer gender transition surgeries. The other, the Equality Act, would override existing law that prevents the federal government from substantially burdening individuals’ exercise of religion without a compelling government interest.Right now, Democrats generally support the latter bill and oppose the former. But supporting the Fairness for All Act, which seeks to fight discrimination while leaving space for religious freedom, would send a strong signal to millions of wavering believers, and it would be good for America.Second, will Democrats stand up to the more radical cultural elements in their own coalition? Jonathan Rauch was an early champion of gay and lesbian rights. In an article in American Purpose, he notes that one wing of the movement saw gay rights as not a left-wing issue but a matter of human dignity. A more radical wing celebrated cultural transgression and disdained bourgeois morality. Ultimately, the gay rights movement triumphed in the court of public opinion when the nonradicals won and it became attached to the two essential bourgeois institutions — marriage and the military.Rauch argues that, similarly, the transgender rights movement has become entangled with ideas that are extraneous to the cause of transgender rights. Ideas like: Both gender and sex are chosen identities and denying or disputing that belief amounts is violence. Democrats would make great strides if they could champion transgender rights while not insisting upon these extraneous moral assertions that many people reject.The third question is, will Democrats realize that both moral traditions need each other? As usual, politics is a competition between partial truths. The moral freedom ethos, like liberalism generally, is wonderful in many respects, but liberal societies need nonliberal institutions if they are to thrive.America needs institutions built on the “you are not your own” ethos to create social bonds that are more permanent than individual choice. It needs that ethos to counter the me-centric, narcissistic tendencies in our culture. It needs that ethos to preserve a sense of the sacred, the idea that there are some truths so transcendentally right that they are absolutely true in all circumstances. It needs that ethos in order to pass along the sort of moral sensibilities that one finds in, say, Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address — that people and nations have to pay for the wages of sin, that charity toward all is the right posture, that firmness in keeping with the right always has to be accompanied by humility about how much we can ever see of the right.Finally, we need this ethos, because morality is not only an individual thing; it’s something between people that binds us together. Even individualistic progressives say it takes a village to raise a child, but the village needs to have a shared moral sense of how to raise it.I’ll end on a personal note. I was raised in Lower Manhattan and was shaped by the progressive moral values that prevailed in the late 1960s and the 1970s. But as I’ve grown older I’ve come to see more and more wisdom in the “you are not your own” tradition.Is there room for people like us in the Democratic Party? Most days I think yes. Some days I’m not sure.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More