Uplifting comparisons legitimize harmful acts by associating them with revered moral figures
Evidence
In the uplifting comparative exoneration for creating these lethal wares, guns are equated semantically with freedom of speech and linked to just causes fought for by revered social reformers. President of the National Rifle Association Sandra Froman (2007) compared the fight for One time “gun freedom” with George Mason and Patrick Henry’s campaign for a Bill of Rights, Susan B. Anthony’s fight for women’s voting rights, Pasteur’s and Einstein’s defenses of their theories, and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle for civil rights. She added the Greek dramatist Euripides and President Kennedy as defenders of free speech. Charlton Heston weighed in with the claim that the Nazi Gestapo were able to persecute the Jews because the Jews lacked gun freedom (“Charlton Heston’s Speech,” 1999). Uplifting comparison bears some likeness to moral justification but differs in how justifications are used. In moral justification, rightness is used directly to turn harmful behavior into good behavior. In uplifting comparisons, the harmful behavior is made worthy indirectly by associating it with revered persons exhibiting moral courage. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 399
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- SEED: The NRA equating gun freedom with the civil rights movement, suffrage, and resistance to the Gestapo is a rich case study in rhetorical moral laundering — an essay contrasting direct moral justification with indirect uplifting comparison could use this as the anchor.
- ADDENDUM: This ‘uplifting comparison’ mechanism parallels the class/identity-political signaling of dress panics — both are ways of borrowing moral legitimacy from revered referents to sanctify one’s own cause.
Related
- Harmful policies gain moral cover when linked to revered reformers (similarity 0.92)
- The gun industry morally elevates itself by equating guns with revered social reformers. (similarity 0.85)
- Comparisons that morally uplift one side are often factually misleading about the cited figures. (similarity 0.79)