I don’t think foreign policy neatly falls into a liberal vs. conservative paradigm or even a two-dimensional model like the Nolan Chart. It certainly doesn’t fit into a Democrat versus Republican paradigm. Afterall there have been both hawkish Democrats and hawkish Republicans as well as Democrats and Republicans whose views have bordered on isolationism (i.e. Seantor Robert Taft, Gore Vidal).

An extra axis is needed, I feel. In fact, you almost need two extra axes, one meant to measure foreign interventionism based on humanitarian/idealistic reasons (i.e. foreign aid, preventing genocide) and one meant to measure foreign interventionism based on the projection of American power.

A conservative by the name of Walter Russel Mead wrote an interesting article called The Jacksonian Tradition and American Foreign Policy, in which he divides Americans into four camps:

Jeffersonians: support a foreign policy based upon noninterventionism

Hamiltonians: support a foreign policy based upon “commercial realism”

Wilsonians: support a foreign policy based upon “crusading moralism” in the context of working with the “world community”

Jacksonians: support an interventionist foreign policy but are suspicious of both the Wilsonians and the Hamiltonians and their “world order initiatives.”
Extremely nationalistic, extremely populist, and “fiercely patriotic.”

I don’t completely agree with Mead (who doesn’t hide his bias in favor of the Jacksonian tradition, and hence my inclusion of Daniel McCarthy’s article as a counter-argument), but it’s an interesting read, nonetheless.

Supposedly the four groups can be plotted on a 2 x 2 graph, but it’s been a while since I’ve read these articles and have forgotten exactly who goes where.

While there isn’t a direct correlation between domestic policy and foreign policy, if one were to attempt to match certain domestic ideologies to these four traditions, it would probably look like this:

Jeffersonians ~ libertarians
Hamiltonians ~ conservatives
Wilsonians ~ liberals
Jacksonians ~ neoconservatives

Not a perfect fit by any stretch of the imagination, but it would explain pre- and post-1970 political alliances.

Pre-1970:
Jeffersonians + Hamiltonians ~ Republicans
Wilsonanians + Jacksonians ~ Democrats

Post-1970:
Jeffersonians ~ Libertarians
Hamiltonians + Jacksonians ~ Republicans
Wilsonians ~ Democrats

Post-2006:
Anyone’s guess

I think I have a pretty good handle on the social/economic leanings, but I’m wondering how you also plot foriegn policy. Militarism vs. diplomacy, isolationism vs. intervention, etc. Do we need more axes to define positions on these, and is there a traditional conservative or liberal philosophy on them?

I think the confusion between the two of us as to what constitutes the true definition of liberalism goes back to my original point–that the term liberalism has become an increasingly vague term. Here in the United States, I have heard the term liberal be used to refer to everything from socialist to libertarian (which mean virutally the exact opposite of each other), and yet Americans INSIST on using the term liberal while assuming everyone knows what they’re talking about.

Between the two of us, confusion might be eliminated by simply using the European (AKA, pre-1930′s America) definition for the terms liberal and conservative. The problem that would arise, however, would be:

1) Most people here are not going to have any clue what we’re talking about. The idea of any liberal being considered right-of-center is a completely foreign concept to most Americans. When Americans look at the political parties of Australia or Germany or Taiwan, we (unfortunately) have to be told that the political party with the word liberal in its name is actually the more fiscally conservative (in the American sense) of the two (or three or four) political parties.

2) I, myself, am not familiar with all the political subdivisions that Europeans have. I’ve heard Europeans used the terms market liberal, social liberal, social Democrat, and Democratic Socialist, but unfortunely, most Americans just aren’t taught those things. We’re talking about a country in which most people can’t even be troubled to learn the difference between Muslims and Arabs (and consequently believe the two to be the same), much less learn about subdivisions of political thought.

It’s an unfortunate result of our polarized political system in which the government is exclusively controlled by two political parties who have co-opted the terms liberal and conservative and defined them as they have seen fit–distorting the definitions of these terms to reflect their own shifting positions on the issues.

Everything is Left versus Right in the United States. Unlike in Europe, we don’t have any viable third parties with which to form interparty coalitions or offer alternative points of view. The Democrats and Replicans control the state legislatures in ALL FIFTY STATES, and they’ve taken it upon themselves to write the ballot access laws in manner that makes it extremely difficult for third parties to get on the ballot.

What I’m arguing is that based upon the Nolan Chart, (in which American liberals tend to favor more personal freedom while American conservatives tend to favor more economic freedom and American libertarians favor both personal freedom AND economic freedom), we ought to split the liberal and conservative quadrants in half in order to differentiate between those liberals and conservatives with libertarian-leanings and those with more populist (or communitarian) leanings.

Therefore, this is what I propose for American liberals:

Liberal = term used to describe liberals with libertarian leanings.

Progressive – term used to describe liberals with populist/communitarian leanings.

This isn’t some political system that I arbitrarily devise. It actually has a good deal of history to support it. In the late nineteen century/early twentieth century, Americans with libertarian leanings were indeed called liberals while those with populist/communitarian leanings were called progressives.

In my opinion, this would not only eliminate much of the confusion caused by the ambiguity of the terms liberal and conservative, but it would bring the term liberal back to its classical liberal roots, thereby making it more consistent with both the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century American definition of the term as well as the contemporary European definition.

You write, in the letter that the left will have a “liberal wing”. That’s not possible. Even, for instance, development liberals (or progressive liberals) are not as far to the left as progressives are. In essence, “progressive liberals” or “development liberals” are slightly left of center for Americans. Then we have the more classical liberals and conservative liberals who are right of center.

In a schedule, it’d be like this:
Leftwing P.L. Center C.L.’s Rightwing

In the PL vs. L.L. you write:

Liberals generally tend to be pro-choice on social/personal issues and anti-choice on fiscal/economic issues. Another way of stating this would be that liberals tend to want the government to have little power to legislate on issues of morality and lifestyle choices but tend to want to government to have considerable power to legislate on issues of the economy and business regulations.

Are we talking about those in America who are called liberals, or are we talking about the essence of liberalism? True liberalism, in its pure sense, is highly in favor of the free market. A true clasically liberal society is a “Nachtwakersstaat” – the government has the responsibility to protect its citizens, law and order and… that’s it (as opposed to the Verzorgingsstaat – Welfare state).

Then you write:

liberals who tend to care more about supporting the government’s interference in fiscal/economic issues than they care about opposing the government’s interference in social/personal issues, I call, for lack of a better term, “progressive liberals.” I have chosen the terms “libertarian” and “progressive” as modifiers because, historically, libertarians have been for less government, while progressives have been for more government (dating back to the Progressive Movement of the late 19th/early 20th century).

True, progressive liberals allow more government interference in the economy, but, always within quite clear boundaries. Left of center, yes? Far to the left? No. Why? Because liberalism itself means limited, very limited, government influence in every possible way. Progressive in the context of progressive liberals simply means that they’ll allow more government influence than clasical liberalism does.

But… that still isn’t thát much compared to real progressives.

Great post, Michael!

But do you know what the truly hilarious thing is?

Eight months ago–I kid you not–I wrote a two-page letter making are argument for using the terms “liberal” and “progressive” to thirty of the most influential liberal (i.e. progressive) bloggers. Yep, I sent a mass email, and in some cases, individual emails to:

Brad Delong
Matthew Iglesias
Huffington Post
Talking Points Memo
Oliver Willis
Washington Monthly
Mother Jones
Ezra Klein
Think Progress
Media Matters
Crooks and Liars
Talk Left
Fire Dog Lake
Glenn Greenwald
Crooked Timber
The Emerging Democratic Majority
Burnt Orange Report
Gun Toting Liberal
World ‘o Crap
(and about a dozen other liberal/progressive bloggers)

Of those 30, do you know what the grand total of responses was (and by response, I mean a human-generated response as opposed to an automatic bounceback of a pre-written Thank you for writing to usresponse)?

Two.

Yep, after sending a two-page letter to each of them, only two bloggers had the courtesy of responding to my letter.

And they very recpetive to my argument. One liberal blogger even accused me of writing “screed” and “using the terminology of tom delay and newt gingrich.”

LOL! Apparently trying to reduce confusion over the meaning of “liberal” and “progressive” puts me on par with Delay and Gingrich!

Both my letter to liberal/progressive bloggers and my post entitled Progressive Liberalism vs. Libertarian Liberalism can be found over at my personal blog.

In my view, Liberal/Libertarian/Conservative refer to government implementation but don’t accurately describe goals.

Good observation, CS. Only one minor correction: it’s a two dimensional grid, of course. Left/right is only one dimension.

Steve; John Stuart Mill is absolutely one of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind.

IMO that is.

Whether you agree with me or not you do have a better idea of where I am coming from.

I’m pleasantly surprised that “John Stuart Mill influenced my political views greatly”. He is one of my political mentors, too.

I believe his comment on conservative intellect has yet to be matched.