My Political Philosophy in Two Sentences

How do the liberal ideal and the conservative ideal differ? I would like to know your viewpoints on each.

-=T=-

What happened to your dislike of labels? What's wrong with just saying something like the following?

I prefer not to label myself as either conservative or liberal because neither term can possibly capture the richness of my political philosophy. Each is a baggage-laden term that has been wrongly demonized by a sizable fraction of the public.

—-

That said, I suspect I know what you meant, but it certainly needs clarification.

Ok, first off, I acknowledge that the use of labels is bad. I also would say that any attempt to classify these two words with a short effort is bound to fail. That said, I'll try anyway:

Conservatism is a longing for the world of Leave it to Beaver, Christmas Story, and Babe Ruth. A world of everyone looking the same, talking the same, eating the same foods, and enjoying the same sports. Everyone loves Jesus, America, Baseball, and tries to work hard so he can be rich and enjoy well-deserved luxury. A core belief of this group is that those who are successful and rich deserve to live luxuriously because they are individually and personally responsible, through the making of good choices, for their own prosperity. And conversely, those who are not successful deserve, to some significant degree, their lower station because they failed to make the correct choices.

Liberals long for the world of Star Trek. This is a world of equality and exotic diversity, where there's no repulsion to being surrounded by people, foods, or ideas that are different than their own. It's a world where money has less value, and where art, science, and exploration are placed as the highest of cultural priorities. Those who hold this ideal tend to believe that ones success or failure, wealth or poverty, depends more on circumstances outside of their control, and thus see the elevation of the underprivileged to be a communal effort that should be willingly funded by those who have been fortunate enough to be successful.

I'm not sure of the extent to which those who label themselves as conservatives or liberals would accept these definitions, but based on THESE definitions (with one tiny change) I'd unhesitatingly call myself a liberal.

The tiny change: “depends more on” –> “depends to some extent on”

I don't think that this changes your intended meaning, but I think that it clarifies things a bit. Of course one of the sources of disagreement is about the extent to which success (or access to success) depends on circumstances outside of ones control, but I'd be stunned if any rational individual argued that everyone has an equal access to success.

From the premise that we do not have equal access to success, rather simple logic tells us that two people who work equally hard and make the same decisions will not generally achieve the same level of success. From this it follows that one can't judge the amount of hard work a person has done or the quality of decisions that a person has made from the level of success that the person has achieved.

I would expect all rational people to agree with that. (Yes, I know that I'm calling some people irrational.)

On the other hand, I would not assume that all rational people would agree that the fact that we don't have equal access to success is something that needs to be fixed. I would also not assume that all rational people who DO think that this is a problem that needs fixing would conclude that the government ought to play a role in the solution. Personally, I am quite comfortable with the idea of government help and believe that evidence suggests that an unrestrained free market is not the most efficient way to increase equality of opportunity.

I believe that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” are best left unused. The three of us (Daniel, cooperati, and myself) almost certainly have differing definitions of the terms (certainly my definitions differ from Daniel's). It's tough to have a discussion centering around words whose definitions aren't agreed upon. For example on the face of it, the following sentence makes perfect sense and would seem hard to argue with.

“If you hold liberal goals you are a liberal.”

But, I'm not sure I agree with it. Perhaps I give people too much credit, but I don't actually believe that GOALS are what separate liberals from conservatives (I'd like to think that we ALL want everyone [everywhere in the world] to be as successful as they can be – that we all want peace and freedom and happiness and prosperity for all). Perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't imagine ANYONE arguing against those goals. The differences between conservatives and liberals are about how best to achieve those goals.

PLEASE correct me if you think I'm missing something here. I have long believed that political differences are more about process than ultimate goals. I have also long believed that there are multiple VALID ways to reach those goals. For example, I believe that there are times that the “conservative” and the “liberal” approach to reaching a goal would BOTH work. I also think that there are times that a compromise blend of the two approaches yields an approach that is worse than either approach on its own. I don't believe that compromise is always bad, just that it sometimes yields an inferior process. (Of course when compromise means the difference between implementing SOME process to acheive an important goal as opposed to doing nothing, then compromise serves an important purpose.)

I don't have a CLUE what you mean here.

I see what you mean, but most people won't see it this way. The thing that will confuse others is your use of the term “liberal means”.

You might think you can ride the fence on this one, but you've probably fallen on one side or the other, depending on the issue at hand.

-=T=-