I’m not going to say I used to be a liberal. I think I still carry the same values and beliefs that I’ve always held (although I may have some new perspectives). I guess it’s like Joe Walsh said: “everybody’s so different, I haven’t changed.”
Looking at what is happening in the world today should warm the heart of any true “liberal.” Surely freedom and democracy and the end of tyranny are traditional liberal values. And yet the left in America (and in much of the world) has steadfastly stood in opposition to the forces that are bringing about the historic changes sweeping the Middle East. What’s up with that? And if these so-called liberals do not support liberation of the oppressed, what exactly do they stand for?
I have never linked to a corporate webpage before, but over at Starbucks.com they have a short Q&A with Jonah Goldberg, a founding editor of National Review Online. He made some points that got me thinking about just how meaningless words like liberal and conservative have become. The world is turned upside down and perhaps finally it is what we believe to be right and just that means more than the label assigned to those beliefs. And it seems that many of those who still proudly call themselves liberal stand for little more than opposition to the forces that are shaping this brave new world. I’m pretty clear on what they are against, but what exactly are they for?
Anyway, here is some of what Mr. Goldberg had to say:
Everywhere, unthinking mobs of “independent thinkers” wield tired clichés like cudgels, pummeling those who dare question “enlightened” dogma. If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them.
I can’t stand it when people say “give peace a chance” as if this was some great insight or suggestion. Imagine you’re sitting around the table in the Situation Room at the White House trying to figure out what to do about, say, China invading Taiwan. Generals are suggesting putting our ships on an intercept course. Diplomats are demanding we go to the Security Council for a resolution. The CIA is insisting there isn’t time as the People’s Liberation Army is already on the move. And some guy yells, “Wait, wait I got it!” Everyone turns to him for a helpful suggestion and he offers “Give peace a chance!”
I think liberalism is rusty and atrophied. Liberalism – by which I mean the political Left in America and not “real liberalism” or classical liberalism – has very little to offer. All of its ideas revolve around protecting, extending or tinkering with government programs and entitlements. In a sense what we call liberalism in America is small-c conservative, even reactionary. It’s based on a knee-jerk desire to defend the status quo. A few years ago Teddy Kennedy took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to denounce government scholarships (a.k.a. “vouchers”) for poor black kids to go to private school. Why? Because Kennedy’s idea of liberalism is whatever reliable liberal interest groups say it is. Liberalism began as a philosophy of limited government. Now what we call liberalism is instinct for the expansion of government at every turn.
Meanwhile, on the cultural front, liberalism seems obsessed with finding hypocrisy in its enemies. This strikes me as a form of philosophical and political surrender because it represents an unwillingness to stand for actual moral judgments. For example, when Rush Limbaugh was accused of drug abuse almost no prominent liberal was willing to condemn the behavior itself. They had to condemn the alleged “hypocrisy.” That’s fine, as far as it goes. But pointing out how others inconsistently apply their own principles is not a substitute for having principles of your own.
I think the Right became associated with change for the fairly simple reason that the liberal pendulum went about as far as America wanted it to. Somewhere C.S. Lewis writes about how a man who takes a wrong turn in the road is not “progressing” by continuing in the wrong direction. Hence, a man who walks backward to where he took the wrong turn is in fact heading in a “progressive” direction. It’s a limited metaphor because life isn’t nearly so static. But conservatives are on the side of change because they are the ones who understand that heading in the wrong direction isn’t progress.
Interesting way to look at it. Still don’t know how I should be labeled, but I will settle for being on the side of progress rather than the mindless defense of a failed ideology.
As my friend Dennis is wont to say “I avoid trite phrases like the plague.” Me too. That’s my two cents worth anyway.
Cross posted at The Wide Awakes
You’re a Reagan Democrat. We are a dying breed.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Goldberg hit it dead on. Rather than standing up for anything, all the leftists attempt to do is point out hypocrisy among the right. The left’s agenda is so “all over the place” that most of them don’t even know what they believe in. They just “know” that if it involves morals or Christ then it must be bad. Hypocrisy is everywhere. We see it on both sides daily. We see it in our own lives. It’s a part of the growing process. One would think that those subscribing to the “progressive” movement would understand. They term it progressive while I term it regressive. They’d have us enter a world of barbarism and anarchy where one’s law is no better or sound than another’s law.
Goldberg’s definition of liberalism is at odds with both my experience and my beliefs. He described liberalism as protecting, tinkering or extending government entitlements or programs. Bush tinkered with medicare and now wants to tinker with social security. Unfortunately he made a costly mess of medicare and his proposals for social security will only add billions to the debt without addressing the solvency problem. The government grew faster under Bush and Reagan than any Democratic president in the last 50 or so years. Republicans have run amok with pork barrel spending and agribusiness and corporate welfare entitlements. As a liberal I believe in restraints in government growth and in government legislation of private affairs. When the actions of the individual or corporation affect the my pocket book though I want government legislation.
Conservatives preach black and white where as liberals see shades of gray interspersed with the black and white. Conservatives preach it but not all of them live it. Those that don’t live it do not condemn those that fail to live up to their platitudes. That is why liberals condemn them for hypocrisy.