What’s American Liberalism… Exactly: Part II?
Yesterday, I published a post about American Liberalism (and linked to it here). A little while later, three great bloggers – Pamela Leavey, Libby Spencer and Ron Chusid, answered some of my questions and shared their thoughts on what American liberalism stands for. Because it was already quite late in the Netherlands, I decided to respond to them today.
I just published a second post on American Liberalism and would like to give you all the opportunity to read it and weigh in.
It is a difficult debate, it always is: what defines a movement, or better, an ideology? To make matters more complicated, most movements are divided. Some ‘liberals’ are what we would call moderate socialists in the Netherlands, others are Centrist, or even (slightly) right off center on economical matters.
One Response to “What’s American Liberalism… Exactly: Part II?”
I highly encourage TMV readers to read the rest of MvdG’s post as well as the comment section that follows. As always, MvdG has written a tantalizing post that is likely to make us all stop and think about the use of certain political labels.
Here is my response to some of the comments in the comment section:
Ascribing definitions to the terms “liberal” and “conservative” becomes a hopeless endeavor when we insist on using subjective criteria instead of objective criteria.
It goes without saying that if you ask two people–a liberal and a conservative–to define the term “liberal”, you’re going to receive two completely different answers.
Likewise, if you ask the same two people to define the term “conservative”, you’re going to receive two completely different answers.
This is so because people have an inherent tendency to define their own ideology more favorably than that of their ideological opponent’s. Both liberals and conservatives endorse flawed policies at times, and yet it isn’t often that you hear them acknowledging the failures of their policies.
Liberalism and conservatism should not be defined according to subjective criteria. Criteria such as “morality”, “fairness”, and “justice” are all subjective criteria that cannot be measured empirically. One person’s “justice” is another person’s “injustice.”
Consider the idea of fairness, for example. Some on the left talk about the rich paying their “fair” share of the taxes. But what exactly is a “fair” share of taxes? To someone on the left, “fairness” might be defined as taxing the rich a disproportionately higher percentage of their income than the poor in order to pay for government services that everyone can enjoy. However, someone on the right (as well as libertarians) might argue that it is inherently “unfair” to taxing the rich at a much higher level than the poor to provide government services that they might not even utilize.
Or consider the idea of morality. Some on the right talk about restoring “morality” in this country. But what exactly is the definition of “morality”? Is it following the traditions set out by a particular religion? And if so, which religion’s “morals” are to predominate? Or is “morality” independent of religion and based more upon a “law-and-order” view that says that individuals must refrain from certain impulses for the good of society as a whole? Some on the right might argue that it is “moral” for the government to prevent people from engaging in certain vices (i.e. homosexuality, pornography, drug use) in order to prevent society from becoming depraved. However, someone on the left (as well as libertarians) might argue that it is inherently “immoral” to the government to forcibly prevent an individual from engaging in an activity that is a no threat to safety or liberty of anyone save the person committing the depraved act.
It is futile to define “liberalism” and “conservatism” based upon subjective criteria such as “morality”, “fairness”, or “justice.” A much more objective criteria would be define these ideologies based upon what they believe the role of government should be and the extent to which the government should be involved in such areas.
In all but a few areas, public policy can be measured objectively according to these criteria. The most obvious cases are those which can be quantified numerically. Tax policy is perhaps the simplest example. Consider two politicians, for example. Politician A wants income tax brackets set at 10%, 15%, and 20% while Politician B wants income tax brackets set at 20%, 25%, and 30%. Now we can argue until we’re blue in the face as to which tax policy is more “moral” or more “fair” or more “just”, but the fact of the matter is that Politician B wants the government to take more of our taxes than Politician A.
This also applies to government spending. Politician A proposes a budget that reduces the number of services offered by the government and thus shrinks the budget by 5% while Politician B proposes a budget that increases the number of services offered by the government and thus increases the budget by 5%. Again, we can spend countless hours debating which budget is more “moral”, or “fair”, or “just”, but the fact of the matter is that Politician A is reducing government spending while Politician B is increasing government spending.
However, the size and scope of government is more than just how much it taxes and spends. It’s also about the ways the government dictates to people how they are to live their lives with laws either forcing people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do or forcibly preventing people from doing things they otherwise would do. Whether it’s laws against drugs, laws against pornography, laws against guns, or the FCC fining televisions radio hosts for saying naughty words–these are all ways in which the government has expanded its power within the last 50 years. If Politician A supports the War on Drugs and Politician B opposes the War on Drugs, we can’t quibble among ourselves who’s right and who’s wrong, but the fact of the matter is that–on this particular issue–Politician A supports bigger government.
With this in mind, I argue that the most objective way to define “liberals” and “conservatives” is by describing their views regarding the proper size and scope of government. Using this definition, conservatives tend to believe that government should minimize its involvement in economic/fiscal matters (i.e. taxation, regulation, spending) but are more open to having the government enforce laws with respect to social/personal matters (i.e. laws against drugs, pornography, gay marriage).
This is in contrast to the left-right dichotomy of the 30′s, 40′s, 50′s, 60′s in which liberals and conservatives were divided primarily along fiscal/economic issues.