In his excellent recent essay “Revolutionizing Ethics,” David V. Johnson calls on leftists to reclaim the moral high ground from those he labels “moral sentimentalists.” He goes on to catalogue an impressive litany of such sentimentalists, from usual liberal suspects like New York Times columnists and Barack Obama to no less a personage than Prince Charles.

There can be no debating Johnson’s analysis that individual moral action has largely supplanted political solutions to today’s social ills. One need look no further than The Foundation for a Better Life’s “Values” ad campaign — which has plastered such platitudes as “Hard work. Pass it On.” and “Ambition is an earnest desire for achievement,” on billboards across the country — to find confirmation for Johnson’s claim that “[c]alling for everyone to be more ethical becomes a serious political platform, even a policy recommendation.” Moralists ascribe blame for structural problems on personal failings in order to obscure their defense of the way in which our society is organized.

But while I concur with Johnson’s analysis, I disagree heartily with his conclusion: that those of us on the Left must take back morality from the sentimentalists; that we must “revolutionize ethics.” Rather, I see an entirely different path forward for the Left: it’s high time to leave behind this idealistic kingdom of morality and rediscover the realm of self-interest. This is the only hope for our movement — to continue to base our politics on moral grounds is to condemn ourselves to continuing political irrelevance.