Tag Archives: conservative

The Death of Language….

One of my constant complaints–one that undoubtedly gets tiresome–is that the words we use in political discourse no longer mean what they used to. Or for that matter, much of anything.

Thanks to Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, “liberal”–which used to refer to 18th Century libertarian Enlightenment thinkers and later was used to mean “open minded”– was twisted into an epithet and replaced by “progressive.” (“Progressive” gets applied to pretty much anyone who doesn’t hate government and gay people, and send racist emails.)

I used to consider myself something of a cross between an Eighteenth-Century liberal and an Edmund Burke conservative, back before the term “conservative” didn’t call up the image of an angry old white guy in a tricorner hat demanding the return of “his” country. So I was nostalgic reading this recent post about Burke by Andrew Sullivan. I really encourage you to read it in its entirety, but here’s a taste:

For a conservative should not be implacably hostile to liberalism (let alone demonize it), but should be alert to its insights, and deeply aware of the need to change laws and government in response to unstoppable change in human society. Equally, a liberal can learn a lot from conservatism’s doubts about utopia, from the conservative concern with history, tradition and the centrality of culture in making human beings, and from conservatism’s love and enjoyment of the world as-it-is, even as it challenges the statesman or woman to nudge it toward the future. The goal should not be some new country or a new world order or even a return to a pristine past that never existed: but to adapt to necessary social and cultural change by trying as hard as one can to make it coherent with what the country has long been; to recognize, as Orwell did, that a country, even if it is to change quite markedly, should always be trying somehow to remain the same.

……..

This means a true conservative – who is, above all, an anti-ideologue – will often be attacked for alleged inconsistency, for changing positions, for promising change but not a radical break with the past, for pursuing two objectives – like liberty and authority, or change and continuity  – that seem to all ideologues as completely contradictory.

I miss the days when labels had content.

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What Those Words Really Mean

According to a post in Daily Kos, in 2010, 42 percent of the electorate self-identified as conservatives, while only 20 percent self-identified as liberals. By 2012, the gap had narrowed to a historic low, with only 35 percent of the Obama-Romney electorate calling themselves conservative, and a full quarter of the electorate (25 percent, the high water mark for the modern era), self-identifing as liberal.

These numbers are intriguing, although I doubt seriously that they signal a shift in political orientation. My theory (for many years now) has been that political terminology lacks much actual content–that the words used to self-describe political philosophy tell us very little about the actual policy preferences of the person using them. What they do tell us is which party that person identifies with. “I’m more like these people and less like those people.”

In other words, in a world where Republicans are seen frugal and self-reliant and Democrats are seen as welfare moochers and members of despised minorities, lots of voters will identify with Republicans. If, on the other hand, Democrats are seen as inclusive citizens who care for the well-being of their communities and Republicans are seen as selfish and bigoted, more people will identify as Democrats.

Credible research into the actual policy preferences of the electorate suggests that Americans are moderately progressive, very supportive of social programs like social security and Medicare, uneasy with abortion but unwilling to reverse Roe v. Wade, and increasingly willing to extend equal rights to GLBT citizens. To the extent that the Democratic party has been able to frame its message to align with those positions, more voters have identified with it. But the real shift hasn’t been better framing by the Democrats; it has been disastrous framing by Republicans.

Whatever one’s views about the actual policies pursued by Ronald Reagan, his GOP was a sunny, affirming party. To use today’s (unfortunate) terminology, it was all about how celebrating the “makers” would benefit the “takers” and all Americans would be better off. Today’s Republicans have painted a very different picture, a picture of a party that believes that the so-called makers are entitled to piss on the so-called takers.

The current image of the GOP–fair or unfair–is of a party unwilling to accept science, unwilling to allow women to make our own reproductive decisions, unwilling to extend equal rights to gays or any path to citizenship to immigrants. In short, it is an image of mean-spiritedness if not outright bigotry.

As a result, the term “conservative” no longer means “prudent and responsible.” And the term liberal–a term Republicans have trashed for at least a quarter of a century–no longer seems like an epithet.

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Boy, Has That Pendulum Swung!

I have been commenting for some time on how dramatically the political pendulum has swung just in my own adult lifetime. When I first became “political,” Democrats were about as far Left as Americans ever go (which, despite dark mutterings from ahistorical types, isn’t all that far when compared to Europe). It was in reaction to what I perceived as the Democrats unrealistic and utopian goals that I joined the Republican party, which at that time was a comfortable home for someone who was a fiscal conservative and a social liberal–or, more accurately, an 18th Century liberal in the Enlightenment mold.

Over the years, both the GOP and the Democrats have moved steadily to the right. Today, the bulk of the Democratic party is pretty much where the Republicans were back then, and–with the exception of some bewildered holdouts–the Republicans have become…well, whatever it is that the irresponsible “party of no”  is these days.

I note this bit of political history because my daughter sent me a link to Abdul’s recent blog, in which he shared a list of “most liberal reporters” created by a local Tea Party group. To my considerable amusement, I was third–after Matt Tully and Jim Shella, ahead of Dan Carpenter, and well ahead of Abdul himself.

The list was “interesting” for several reasons. I’m not a reporter nor do I currently write for the Star, despite being so identified on the list. Dan Carpenter–who I admire–is significantly more liberal than I am, but we are both columnists who do share our political perspectives.  Matt Tully–who I would not consider particularly liberal despite his position of honor at the head of the list–is also a commentator rather than a straight reporter, so I suppose he’s fair game.  But Jim Shella? Mary Milz?What possible basis exists for characterizing them as “liberal”? That they report facts? It’s a puzzlement.

The Tea Party did helpfully append a list of positions that they believe constitutes “liberalism.” And it’s a hoot:

Anti-tea party, world government; weak local government; centralized state government; weak states’ rights; high progressive tax rates; pro Common Core; anti school vouchers; free universal health care; pro gun control; full rights to gay marriage; abortion without restriction; centralized economy; tax on hydrocarbon fuels; open international borders; lower national defense spending; and European Socialism.

Granted, this laundry list lacks clarity–it falls into the “name calling” rather than the “descriptive” category. What, for example, qualifies as “weak” state’s rights? How much “gun control” is enough to qualify one as a leftist? Evidently, recognition of climate change and support of equal rights for GLBT folks makes one liberal, in which case I plead guilty. (I also admit to being somewhat “anti” Tea Party, although I’m not sure that equates to being “pro” one-world government.)

The Tea Party folks may lack a coherent understanding of conservatism, liberalism, socialism, fascism and other “isms,” but they are surely correct that my own label has changed as the pendulum has swung. In fact, I feel a lot like that Dr. Seuss book, “Oh the Places You’ll Go!” The difference is, I’ve traveled while standing still.

Maybe–if I keep standing and live long enough–the pendulum will swing back.

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Bartlett’s Oddyssey

Bruce Bartlett has written a rather sad article in the American Conservative , detailing his estrangement from the conservative movement–or at least, the folks who have current ownership of that title. He begins by listing his past service to the Republican party and conservative causes, service that should have earned him the right to dissent from orthodoxy without being shunned.

Of course, it didn’t. When your economic and political beliefs take on the character of religious dogma–when they become matters of faith rather than opinions grounded in experience and evidence–dissent becomes blasphemy.

As Bartlett describes his journey into the “reality-based world” (his own description), he makes some discoveries that startle him.

For the record, no one has been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the economy’s problems than Paul Krugman. The blind hatred for him on the right simply pushed me further away from my old allies and comrades.

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.

Of course, Bartlett is correct about Obama’s centrism. It drives the left wing of the Democratic party nuts.

When I read “The Audacity of Hope,” I remarked that Obama’s philosophy as described in that volume was virtually identical to that of a moderate Republican–at least, as moderate Republicans defined ourselves in the 1980s. His positions were pretty much the positions I’d espoused in my run for Congress back then, when I was actually considered part of the conservative wing of the party.

When I left the GOP in 2000, the party had already left me. It had shifted dramatically to the Right, and it has continued its radical transformation. That so many thoughtful people fail to recognize how different today’s GOP is from the party of Goldwater and even Reagan is something of a statement on our very human tendency to resist recognition of change.

It’s like looking in the mirror every morning for years without noticing that your formerly black hair has been slowly turning  grey, that your once-rosy complexion is becoming a bit more wrinkled each day…and then somehow, suddenly and without warning, actually seeing that you’ve aged thirty years. When did that happen?

Bartlett looked in the mirror. It’s a sad article, but well worth the read.

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Conserving Our System

What passes for political discourse these days is so debased, so irrational, that we no longer even think about the real meanings of the words we throw around. So “socialist” is conflated with “Nazi” (and used without any obvious understanding of what the term describes) and “conservative” is used to describe positions that are anything but.

To be conservative is to “conserve”–to protect elements of the past.

E.J. Dionne makes the point that today’s self-described conservatives are really radicals bent upon a wholesale abandonment of settled aspects of our national life.  It’s an important column, and well worth reading in its entirety.

Now, there are times when wholesale change is necessary or advantageous. There are other times when dramatic, radical reinvention is profoundly harmful. In a democratic system, it is up to the voters to decide whether they want to replace what they have with something radically different. But in order to make that decision, voters need to understand what is really being proposed–and in an era where propaganda has displaced much of the news, where a pitiful minority know enough about America’s history or constitutional system to recognize the magnitude of the changes the current GOP field is advocating, the significance of the 2012 election is not obvious to many–perhaps most–voters.

What was that old Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times?

We’re there.

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