Are You A Liberal? (Rerun)
Dean
One of my war cries for the last couple of years has been, "The Left isn't Liberal!" Most people look at me like I'm daft when I say that, but many so-called "right-wingers," who are actually quite liberal themselves, know exactly what I mean.
If you look at any decent dictionary, you'll find that "liberal" is generally defined as the American Heritage dictionary defines it:
1) Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
2) Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded
Notice what that definition does not say. It says nothing about your view of taxes. It says nothing about your views of homosexuality. It says nothing about your view of the right to keep and bear arms, or abortion, or feminism, or school prayer, or whether you vote Democratic or Republican or 3rd party or not at all.
If we take that definition seriously, I could be a card-carrying member of the NRA with a concealed-carry permit, I could think homosexuality is sinful, I could think taxes are much too high, I could think Bill Clinton was a horrible President, I could think that welfare checks cause crime and poverty and destroy the human soul, I could oppose socialized medicine, I could think abortion is murder, I could believe that our Social Security system is a ripoff that steals from our children, I could think our public schools can best be fixed by freedom of choice for parents, I could think Rush Limbaugh is hilarious and a boon to American culture, I could think legalizing medical marijuana is a horrible idea, I could think the mainstream media is badly biased, I could think democracy is a daft idea, I could think that Alan Dershowitz should be strapped into a barber chair and forced to listen to Courtney Love records... heck, I could think all of that and more, and still be a liberal.
By the way, please note that I do not believe all of the above. I may not believe most of it, although I do believe some of it. You can guess, but I'm not saying (at least, not now). Yet if I did subscribe to all those views, most Americans would balk if I called myself a liberal. Why is that?
The problem is that when millions of Americans say "liberal," they are referring to a fairly specific set of beliefs completely at odds with everything I described two paragraphs ago. Just as interesting, many people who hold said beliefs are, in fact, not at all "free of bigotry," "favoring of reform," "unorthodox," "broad-minded," or "anti-authoritarian."
Some time in the late 20th Century (it's open to debate exactly when, or at whose hands), "liberal" came to mean, basically, a socialist. Usually, it's a socialist who believes that the state is dangerous when it arrests criminals or wants to limit pornography or abortion, but should be free to regulate our lives in just about any other way. It is also axiomatic for them that, since taxes are an unavoidable aspect of life, any amount of taxation is moral. As long as we democratically elect those who impose the taxes, it doesn't matter how much they take away from our fellow citizens. Indeed, the only caveat is that a "moral" tax will be leavied not just in higher amounts, but at much higher rates on vaguely-defined groups they call "the rich" and, of course, those "greedy corporations."
Astonishingly, most folks who think like this (mind you, I used to consider myself one of them) also think tend to of themselves as free of bigotry and intolerance--although if you changed the words "rich" and "corporations" in many of their statements to oh, let's say "Jews," the nature of their views would be far more open to question. Ditto on many (not all, but many) of their rants about "The Religious Right."
Such people also usually think themselves to be axiomatically intelligent, good and decent because of their obviously (to them) righteous ideals. They take it as a given that anyone who disagrees with them on any fundamental issue is, ipso facto, stupid, ignorant, selfish, mean-spirited, or just plain evil. This is especially ironic, because most of those opposed to their views are highly anti-authoritarian and unorthodox and are, at least some of the time, quite broad-minded and tolerant.
It makes certain conversations difficult to have in American English. I really wish I could think of a good way to clear this mess up, but I can't.
It's funny, when you think about it.
Related Posts (on one page):
- More On The Genesis Of Rights
- The Genesis of Rights
- Are You A Liberal? (Rerun)
I hear it said quite often that "right-wing" in America today means "in favor of the actions in Iraq," and that no other part of one's political philosophy can "make up" for it."
Anti-war-on-drugs, pro-gay-rights, pro-privacy, pro-free-culture, pro-self-determination ... all of those together cannot counter the "conservativism" of supporting efforts to kill terrorists and spread democracy.
I don't understand it, but it's the way the words have come to be used.
The way I see it, the defining characteristic of today's "conservatives" is their desire to be self-sufficient, and to take direct, person-to-person action to help friends, family, and neighbors who need it. "If there's a problem, get off your duff and fix it."
What most offends these people is a challenge to their ability to take care of themselves.
The defining characteristic of "liberals" is that they tend to look to government to solve problems. If there's a problem, it is quite likely that another law or more 'government funding' will fix it.
They seem to be most offended when the issues they believe in don't get "the attention they deserve."
(I had a hard time coming up with a "most offended by" statement, there... I wonder if that means I'm off-base...)
The reason why people look at you funny when you say "The Left isn't liberal!" is because you're deliberately using a non-political sense of the word "liberal" in relation to the political concept of "the Left". It's called equivocation.
True enough. But the point I think that Dean is dramatizing, by using this use of the word liberal, is just how far left wing elements of this country have shifted since the 1960s. In that sense, its a fair rhetorical device.
Now, don't get "shook", but I'm going to quote you some stuff from H. L. "Bill" Richardson's Slightly To The Right! (1965):
"....The dictionary defines a political conservative as:
""1. A person tending to preserve from ruin or injury.
""One who aims to preserve from innovation or radical change; one who wishes to maintain an institution or form of government in its present state."
"From this definition you MIGHT call us Conservatives because we want to conserve the constitutional structure as it was intended, but we have no intention of conserving some of our present programs such as Foreign Aid to communist enemies, coexistence, and deficit spending. From the classical definition of the word, Adlai Stevenson would be a Conservative, because he and others of the same political persuasion are trying to conserve our present policies.
""Conservative" to present day Conservatives usually means one who loves his country and its institution, opposes totalitarianism, believes in individual freedom, is not selfish or bigoted, embraces other people's interests, and advocates greater freedom of thought and action. Don't get "shook," but I've just given you Webster's Dictionary's definition of "liberal." If you don't believe me, look it up.
""Conservatism" to Communists means one thing only . . . . active opposition, or as they call it, Fascism."
I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again: Who gave the Left control of the adjectives?
1. The Left took control of the adjectives;
2. The people who distrbute the adjectives and their definitions, such as teachers and mass media, tend toward the Left and so go toward the Left's definitions;
3. The non-Left allowed the control of adjectives to slip from them, discounting their importance.
Or maybe it was a trade, y'know, adjectives for nouns or something.
Indeed. Historically, "Left" means revolution, secularism, and equality. "Right" means tradition, religion, and hierarchy. "Liberal" means individual freedom, freedom of religion, and equality before the law. On such a triangular spectrum, you can call me a Right-leaning Liberal.
As far as I'm concerned, the prime test of a Liberal is whether he or she believes in free speech. Any advocate of censorship, Political Correctness, "hate speech" laws, and the like is not a Liberal in any sense. A Marcusean, yes. A "Progressive", yes. A Communist or collectivist, certainly. But not a Liberal.
There's also nothing Liberal at all about gun confiscation, racial quotas, Israel-bashing, or any of the other illiberal causes so fashionable on the Left today. They can have "Progressive". I hate that word, so they can have it.
By the same token, there is nothing Conservative about amending the Constitution so as to have the federal government dictate the terms of marriage to the states -- in order to exile homosexuals to promiscuity, nor Big Brother in our bedrooms, nor Communist-style brainwashing to change homosexuals into heterosexuals or asexuals. I'm Conservative and I'm against all of that.
As I've observed before, the totalitarians of the Left are becoming ever more Nazi-like while the totalitarians of the Right are becoming ever more Communist-like.
I'm stating outright that today's left isn't liberal in any meaningful sense at all.
Of course, many on the right are not either. I have no more in common with, say, Michael Savage than I do with a lock-step reactionary like Janeane Garafalo.
2. The people who distrbute the adjectives and their definitions, such as teachers and mass media, tend toward the Left and so go toward the Left's definitions;
3. The non-Left allowed the control of adjectives to slip from them, discounting their importance.
This is quite true, and apt.
They stole the word. It's time we steal it back.
If we could just figure out a way to make a hot issue out of enforcing the 9th and 10th amendments, then we'd see who was not either liberal or conservative....liberals and conservatives would fall all over themselves to support such a cause, the non-conservative/liberals would be aghast at any such movement. That done, we'd have 'em right where we want 'em - exposed for all to see as anti-American Statists, and swiftly and permanently rejected by the American people.
Or, heck with it, we could just clear out the Reds like we did in post-WWI America.
Conservatives, at bottom, trace themselves back to defenders of the old Christian and monarchist society of Europe; while American conservatism necessarily takes a slightly different tack, the fundamentals are the same - a stout defense of the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian civilisation against those who would inject novelties which would tend to errode same.
Liberals, at bottom, started out in full revolt against the overtly Christian and monarchist principles of our civilisation - holding that empowered Christianity stunted societal development and monarchies tending to perpetuate corrupt and narrow-minded ruling classes. The liberal ideal, however, was not revolutionary change but, rather, evoluationary; believing that the spread of education would eventually turn everyone into good liberals who would no longer need a Church to guide them, or a Monarch to control them.
Outside of both schools of though stands what we may term as the Left; considering the whole structure of civilization to be a monstrous imposition, and hating liberalism even more than conservatism because the ameliorative aspects of liberalism tended to lessen the anger of the "outs" and thus make revolution less likely. It was the challenge of the Left which pushed conservatives to become more liberals and liberalism to become more conservative - as conservatives realised that some change was necessary as an innoculation against revolution while liberalism recognised that continuity of institutions and habits was necessary to keep society on an even keel.
In the end, Dean, I think you're going to lose your fight - "liberal" will remain the operational word for "leftist", while all people who defend the basics of our civilization will become "conservative", even if they harbor rather odd notions...
Personally, I would have preferred to have Courtney Love forced to listen to Alan Dershowitz....
A reading:
"The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth on the fairgrounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals."
H.L. Mencken cracked that in 1913.
The thing you're talking about, Dean, is about a century old, now.
Weird when a good word has been turned in to a slum for authoritarian wannabes.
Good to see you here!
Mark Noonan:
Excellent! I would enthusiastically support a movement to revive both the 9th and the 10th Amendments. The 1st and 2nd Amendments are not too popular among certain elements either. None of the Bill of Rights is popular, which is why our Founding Fathers put those rights in the Constitution instead of to a plebiscite. As I've said here many times before, America was founded as a Constitutional republic, not a democracy.
As to Monarchy, that is my most ideal form of government, short of no government at all. I've long thought about the difference between Constitutional monarchies and Constitutional republics. Monarchies are like majestic snow-capped peaks. Republics are like extinct volcanoes. You look at the crater, and you can see that the top was blown off in a violent explosion some time ago. In other words, republics have had revolutions. The United States of America, of course, and also France, Russia, Ireland. Countries like England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, did not have such upheavals. These are among the most Liberal (in the old and true sense) societies on earth, and at the same time and for the same reason the most Conservative. I'm against most revolutions and for monarchies. I'm for Throne and Altar. Because of Liberals, these two institutions have renounced the coercive powers they once exercised, but they still retain their spiritual powers. The time has come to exercise those spiritual powers in defense of our civilization.
I must mention that Dr. Fred N. Kerlinger, in his Liberalism and Conservatism: the Nature and Structure of Social Attitudes, argues that Liberal and Conservative are not antagonistic but orthogonal, in other words, not opposite poles of a single dimension but two different dimensions. I will have to review his book in another spectrum post some time in the future, as well as the excellent spectrum Dr. Elsworth Baker outlined in his Man in the Trap.
Perhaps the problem is that liberalism's inherent weakness is to be too tolerant of people it should be anxious to distance itself from. Conservatives--thanks in large part I think to William F. Buckley Jr.--learned that you really can do this, and that it's the right thing to do.
I really wanted to cite from Louis Menand's "The Philosophical Club", but my copy is checked out to a friend of mine, so I can't do that. (If you haven't read this yet, you should. You could find pretty good material on the very transformation that you placed "late in the 20th Century" actually happening concurrently with the rise of Pragmatism -- an authentic American disaster -- late in the 19th century.)
I spent some time with Charles Breunig's "The Age Of Revolution And Reaction -- 1789-1850" (second edition, 1977), which contains some pretty good looks at the fight over the term taking place across the English Channel in the wake of 1848.
I chose that Mencken quote because it's funny as hell and absolutely true. This is not true: "He always had snotty things like that to say about anyone." I've read the man extensively, and I know better. Where he admired someone or something, there are no more ardent rhapsodies in 20th century American letters.
But I believe I know where the problem is here.
In their bones, "the old school liberals" were every bit as socialist as today's variants.
It's just that very few people saw this a hundred years ago because their logic had never been so fully developed to practice as it is today.
Rick Perlstein wrote a very, very good history of the 1964 Goldwater campaign. Here, he has added remarks to a discussion taking place among several lefty blogs. Note:Perlstein is intimating that the meaning of the word has changed, Dean, and what's more is that he's placing the shift very nearly the time that you chose.
Which do you think is more true?
I think you're both wrong.
Note this carefully: his definition of a "liberal" calls for expanding the New Deal. You, yourself, used the word "socialism" to describe where liberals are, today. I'm begging you, Dean. Try to understand: the historical course from social security to Medicare to HillaryCare and beyond is nothing but a consistent extension of the principles that liberals held almost as far back as the turn of the 20th century.
"Socialism" is a matter of principles.
What Perlstein is talking about is the course that those principles have taken.
What you were talking about is the fact that it's arrived.
As regards to the debate over who is a liberal and what liberalism means: I quite agree that it is an old debate. I generally hew to John Stuart Mill's school of thought, and a pretty good series of essays on that can be found in The Betrayal of Liberalism: How the Disciples of Freedom and Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal Politics of Coercion and Control, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. Oddly enough, I'd also make note of William F. Buckley Jr.'s out-of-print Up From Liberlism, in which he may have personally been responsible for the generation of the term "liberal" as a specific label--in it he himself claimed to be a liberal, but drew a distinction between that and what he called "Liberals" with a captal-L, a specific subset of atheists, Marxist fellow travellers, etc.
It may even be that it's a debate that must be had at least once every generation, and fought and fought again. No matter: the fight goes on, for far too many people on the left simply are not liberal and I have no trouble at all rattling their cages to let them know it.
Regarding socialism: look mate, Marxism is utter and complete poppycock and a murderous philosophy, but I find Rand-style objectivism and her schools of fellow-travellers not to be anywhere near as evil, but every bit as daft. Socialism as an all-pervasive system is evil. But socialism in the lower-case "s" sense? Sorry man, I've no problem at all with public schools, government-run sanitation, water treatment, etc.
Almost all of the New Deal programs were gone by the 1950s. Some parts of it reverberate through and continue through this day, Social Security being the most visible (and creakily out of date) vestige of it. But history has proven the Randites and other conservatives wrong; after a while, the majority of Americans got tired of the overweening welfare state and eventually got rid of it. The notion that we're on a slippery slope toward greater and greater government control and more and more socialism is nonsense, we've been gradually shedding ourselves of most of that for about two decades now.
Liberalism, at least democratic liberalism, is a matter of principles, the first and foremost principle being that the everyday person has more common sense than elitists of any stripe will give him, and faith that if democratically elected government erects institutions which don't work, eventually voters will demand change.
Those are the principles I stand on: the liberal democratic order works better than anything else, and is to be trusted over anything else. This puts me firmly at odds with a lot of conservatives and libertarians. I recognize this; what's funny is that they often don't, because by coincidence we happen to agree on a lot of big-ticket items of the moment. In another day, other circumstances, we would be enemies. So be it. [shrug]
I'm really sorry to hear that, Dean.
It's because of this fact:
Never, ever, in my life would it occur to me to hire someone to point a gun to your head and force you to pay for things that I value.
I simply wouldn't do that to you, and I cannot fathom why you would do it to me.
You have rights pretty much because the rest of us agree that you do, and really for no other reason than that. I know that must be shocking to some people to hear but so be it: your rights exist because we agree you should have them, and the only thing that secures them is Constitutional government--period.
You have benefitted from the laws of this society from before you were born--the protections of law enforcement and the courts and the armed forces first and foremost. In exchange you have been granted a host of rights that we all agree you should have, and have also been assigned certain obligations and duties--one of which is to pay your taxes to pay for all these services.
If you do not like it you can become a protestor and live with the consequences of that, or, you can up and leave and look for a better place to live. Suits me fine either way.
Philosophically I am neither a socialist nor an objectivist nor anything else. I am a liberal democrat and a constitutional republican. Those are the fundamental bedrock of my philosophy.
I understand perfectly well the reasoning which says people have rights outside of these things. I reject them.
As I have said, this means that while I may make common cause with some libertarians, conservatives, objectivists, etc., it does mean that in other contexts I would be their enemy. Ayn Rand would certainly consider me an enemy. So be it.
My god, you people are depraved.
You can, I suppose, take the position that God gives you rights, but when you get right down to brass tacks no one is 100% in agreement on what rights God says you should have. So where do you seek your source for your rights? Marx's bullshit? Ayn Rand's pretty philosophical constructs that she pretended were objectively verifiable even though they weren't?
The only rational conclusion is that your only guarantor--your only guarantor--of your rights is government. So you'd best hope for Constitutional government with enumerated rights, a stable legal tradition, and liberal democratic values.
Depraved? You take a sledgehammer to the soapbox you stand upon, sir.
Ah, but unless you state affirmatively that your rights are endowed by a Creator then they are merely conditional upon everyone agreeing; a smart atheist goes to Church, as it were.
Its another reason to be conservative - and a believer; its simply illogical and self-destructive to not be conservative and a believer.
My father, who is now too old to be worried about what people think, has had a lot of fun going on to left wing forums and announcing boldly that he's a monarchist by inclination and only a republican by necessity. Nothing gets a faux-liberal frothing at the mouth quicker'n stating you'd like to see a properly annointed Emperor in charge of temporal affairs, supported by a Pope looking after matters theological.
As for me, pro-tempore, I am in favor of our continued elected-king system. The genius of our system is its blending of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy; there's something in it for everyone other than an leftist to support.
Hey, it sounds more impressive, doesn't it?
Terrific once again! Your style!
However, the thought of a King James Earl Carter makes me want to puke. Jimmy (the Traitor) Carter isn't fit to lick the shoes of the court jester. I hate him so much I'd rather have had James Earl Ray as President or King instead!
Dean wrote:
"You have rights pretty much because the rest of us agree that you do, and really for no other reason than that. I know that must be shocking to some people to hear but so be it: your rights exist because we agree you should have them, and the only thing that secures them is Constitutional government--period."
I can only say that I could not be more confirmed in disagreement.
"As I have said, this means that while I may make common cause with some libertarians, conservatives, objectivists, etc., it does mean that in other contexts I would be their enemy. Ayn Rand would certainly consider me an enemy. So be it."
I'm on the side of those Libertarians, Conservatives, Objectivists, etc.. What this means is that, while I make common cause with Dean about 99% of the time these days, in other contexts, I would have to be his enemy. He is a most worthy enemy, of course. A wonderful friend and a formidable foe. A powerful man.
"You can, I suppose, take the position that God gives you rights, but when you get right down to brass tacks no one is 100% in agreement on what rights God says you should have. So where do you seek your source for your rights? Marx's bullshit? Ayn Rand's pretty philosophical constructs that she pretended were objectively verifiable even though they weren't?"
Marx's bullshit? No way, Jose. Ayn Rand grounded man's inalienable rights in his nature as a rational being dealing with an objective reality, and I agree with that as far as it goes. But I also agree with E. Merrill Root, James Keiffer, and others that man's rights, values, and being must come from a Higher Source than the purely natural objective reality Ayn Rand believed in. It is true that we theists will necesarily disagree on the nature of that Higher Power and of the rights and responsibilities we have in relation to that Higher power. So be it.
History bears this out, I beleive. If God is the source of, say, freedom of speech, where was he when Americans were being jailed for speaking out against World War I. Our modern understanding of free speech is much, much younger than the Amendment on which it rests, but this proves the primary role of government in granting rights. If, through some remarkable conjunction of unimaginable events, Congress passed (and states ratified) an appeal of the First Amendment's Free Speech clause, then no Americans would have freedom of speech. What God thinks about that wouldn't enter into it.
Nobody says that liberals are intolerant. We're saying that Leftists like you are anything but liberal. Thanks for revealing your atheist-collectivist (Communist) premises. I know who I'm dealing with now. On your premises, there is no way anybody could condemn Stalin or Hitler, and perhaps you don't.
You are right, though, that Right needs Might to back it up. That is why we Conservatives, Libertarians, Objectivists, and true Liberals will never give up our guns.
As a practical matter, on the issue we're discussing here--the Rights of Man--the notion that I'm the enemy of anyone but totalitarians is more theoretical than practical.
Nevertheless, I'll repeat: I rest all of my philosophical principles on the notion that there are and cannot be any ultimate standards for what is or is not a right which do not rest squarely in constitutional republicanism and liberal democracy. Sorry, but they don't; you can claim God grants you this right but, even assuming that to be true, you are still dependent upon men to go with God's will on these things, and for that you once again need constitutional law and liberal democracy.
You can angrily declare that you have X, Y, or Z rights, but if the rest of us don't agree with you, tough shit. You can write hundreds of thousands of words worth of books like Ayn Rand or Karl Marx and it only takes those of us who look at it and say, "Ah bullshit" and your elaborately constructed intellectual edifices are nothing but castles made of sand.
Empirically speaking, only one thing has ever been shown to guarantee human rights: government. You think not? I invite you to visit government-free anarchy zones such as Somalia or Sudan to see the difference.
Human beings have gone through endless experiments on ways to guarantee their fundamental rights, and nothing--absolutely nothing--has ever been proven more effective than liberal democracy within a constitutional republican framework. That's simply reality.
As a secularist and an atheist, you can strike the word "Creator" out of there and the whole thing still stands so far as I'm concerned. But since "Creator" is easily defined as "the universe as a whole and the society in which I was nurtured and raised and am a member of," it still works.
Governments are instituted among men to secure their rights, and derive their just powers from the consent of the governed--and the only consent that works is majoritarian consent.
A majority of Americans clearly support the Constitution, whether they realize it intellectually or not. The day a majority of them cease to do so, we will have anarchy or we will have civil war. Or, if they feel strongly enough, they will alter or abolish said Constitution.
Nothing wrong with any of that, since history proves, most definitively, that we are freer and safer because of that way of doing things than any system of government or way of ordering society that has ever existed in all of human history.
Can we improve upon it? Probably. But I've no truck with those who wish to impose anarchy, monarchy, theocracy, or any other system upon me under their elaborately constructed theories of why it would be better. Go out and prove it first, then we'll talk.