It Is Time To Flip Our Terminology Around
July 15, 2011 5 Comments
I’ve often written about how those who, in our political spectrum, are called ‘liberals’ are anything but. In fact, on virtually all issues that do not involve bumping genitalia and/or narcotics, ‘liberals’ will be the ones voicing the authoritarian, statist, and just all-around illiberal position. A political inversion has taken place and this is the side I tend to focus on.
But there is another, albeit weaker, pattern which is that, on some things anyway, ‘conservatives’ – at least some sizable fraction of them – can be anything but, as well.
Take the issue of whether the United States should default on its debt. Without going too deeply into it, let’s just consider who might say ‘sure, let’s just do it and damn the consequences’. Someone saying this is more likely to be on the right. Meanwhile, those on the left will be wringing their hands terrified about all the awful armaggedonish consequences!
This was also true during The Financial Crisis™ of 2008. ‘Liberals’ lived in fear of this freezing up or that freezing up and society regressing to living in caves as a result if we didn’t engineer some massive intervention to prop up the system. ‘Conservatives’ (such as myself) were more likely to be the ones saying: let the weak links go bankrupt, clean out the dreck, and let the chips fall where they may. Shrug.
These and similar issues find mostly ‘liberals’ in desperation about how to preserve the status quo and willing to prop up existing power structures and institutions at all costs, and a sizable portion of ‘conservatives’ unafraid of change, even if major and painful, if some important principle and/or freedom is at stake. In short, these issues involve ‘liberals’ being conservative and ‘conservatives’ being…well, fairly liberal.
Perhaps it’s time to start using these terms correctly instead of the opposite of correctly.
First point, yep.
Second point, well, I don’t agree, quite. Or perhaps, I just do not understand.
It is Conservative to expect, and desire for, the Free Market to do it’s thing.
Leftists have always been afraid for the Free Market to do it’s thing.
I guess the question is, is it “Liberal” to allow the Free Market to do it’s thing? Yes, indeed, I guess that would be Liberal. But then, are you saying there was a time that Conservatives would have favored forcing a solution via government intervention?
Part of the problem is that ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ have never quite been opposites. So it’s not only that we’ve switched places, it’s that the two are not mutually exclusive, so sometimes it’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
Conservative, broadly, means wishing to conserve existing structures, institutions, and knowledge. Liberal, broadly, means advocating liberty and laissez-faire. The U.S. was founded on principles and rhetoric of liberty. That is, it was founded as a liberal state. People who wish to preserve those foundations (=conservatives) such as myself and yourself are, therefore, liberal. (The people who get called ‘liberals’ in mainstream usage – i.e. leftists/socialists – have historically been neither liberal nor conservative.)
The problem is that we have long departed from our liberal foundations: the principles of the current state and power structure no longer support liberty in any meaningful sense, to the point where socialism and statism are the status quo power structure. So true liberals ought to be, and are, against many of the existing structures and traditions we now have in place: massively demoralizing welfare, pyramid-scheme social programs, racial caste system (diversity/’affirmative action’), confiscatory taxation, etc. True liberals should not and do not wish to conserve these things. In other words, they are not very conservative.
Leftists, meanwhile, do wish to conserve these things, and will shriek and fight tooth and nail to do so. Accordingly, they fear any prospect of change as an existential threat. In other words, they behave and think conservatively.
To be more accurate you could call both the left and the right ‘conservative’ – it’s just that we have different things and values we wish to conserve. But what can be striking are those times when leftist thinking and power becomes so preeminent that the right becomes completely anticonservative, in a nothing-to-lose sort of way. I think we’re living through one of those times.
Gotcha.
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