Sep
28
Defining Liberalism And Conservatism
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 57 Comments
Whilst holding my nose and trying not too breath, I was reading the Balloon Juice site (far too many noxious gasses there) when I came upon a post trying to define conservatism and liberalism. Now intelligence and Balloon Juice are strange bedfellows so very little was achieved, so I figured we might do better.
Some noteworthy quotations from people that matter:
Conservatism
Abraham Lincoln:
“What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried”
Dennis Prager:
“Liberals tend to put the onus of your success on society and conservatives on you and your family.”
And one of my favourite definitions of conservative from Michael Oakshott:
“To be conservative…..is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”
Liberalism*
Hubert H Humphrey:
“Liberalism, above all, means emancipation — emancipation from one’s fears, his inadequacies, from prejudice, from discrimination… from poverty.”
Friedrich Von Hayek:
What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move.
My own limited definition, is that liberalism is the kick up the backside that conservatism needs, whilst conservatism is the brake on liberal excess.
Now it’s your turn.
* I had trouble finding some good liberal quotes that weren’t critical or back-slappingly self-congratulatory. That’s probably because “liberalism” is too broad a subject to be defined easily. Both Republicans and democrats can lay claim to being liberal, either in it’s modern or classical sense. It might be easier to define progressivism or left-liberalism.
Sep
14
An Instructive Commentary
Filed Under American Politics, Liberalism | 18 Comments
Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect has an article at The Huffington Post which I find to be an interesting insight into the Progressive mindset. He writes on the subject of a tax on financial speculation to lessen the potential for negative impacts such as we witnessed last year. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest such a thing. The financial markets did get carried away on a glut of unregulated and incautious speculation. The results, banks going to the wall, were self-inflicted and ordinary people suffered hugely as a result.
But it’s also important to understand that we rely on such speculation, and as we suffer now, we have benefited hugely in the past from the same levels of speculation. And no doubt, our future prosperity will also be dependent on the financial industry. We no longer store our loot under the mattress. We are invested in pensions, mortgages and shareholdings. Our borrowing and our savings depend on rates set within the corridors of financial power.
And to that end, any attempts at regulation, or demands for greater accountability need to be tempered with this in mind. We need to be looking for functional measures that balance protecting ourselves from the excesses whilst using a light a touch as possible when it comes to restraint.
I was expecting this sort of commentary from Kuttner, having read the first couple of paragraphs. I was wrong:
First, a very small tax in all kinds of financial transactions, say one tenth of one percent, would not be felt by legitimate long-term investors. But in the case of traders who get in and out of exotic derivatives minute by minute, making huge numbers of quickie trades, it would add up to a lot of money and would cut into both their profits and their entire socially destructive business strategy.
Second, such a tax could pull in hundreds of billions of dollars a year, at a time when large deficits are giving the political right (and center) an excuse to cut social spending, and no form of taxation is popular. But this tax would be the least unpopular. It would not just fall primarily on the very, very wealthy. It would fall on the least socially defensible part of Wall Street, the people who make their billions from speculative short term trades.
What is overdue is a little bit of populist retribution against the people who brought down the system — and will bring it down again if the hegemony of the traders is not constrained.
So the progressive is not interested in a financial system that works. It is social justice, political retribution, sustaining large increases in public spending, and finally punishing the rich, that motivates them. I don’t think that much more proof is needed that the socialists of the seventies and eighties have morphed into the progressives of today.
Society is an organic whole. It is dependent on it’s constituent parts functioning well and in harmony. But for people like Kuttner, a functioning society is not what is desired. They want a society that they can control and manipulate to provide for “social justice”.
But that’s the thing about progressivism. It can never be truly about social justice. By definition, progressivism is about manipulating society, it is mechanistic rather than organic, and where is the justice in having self-appointed social engineers pulling the strings on the society they deem suitable?
Aug
2
The Stratification Of Society
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 15 Comments
In a comment by Hayward, a reply to my recommendation of the book “The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945″, he posted a review of the book which included this little gem:
Conservativism is about the entrenchment of power and the stratification of society. At all levels from race, to wealth to gender, each will know his place.
It put me in mid of a post I’d recently read at HotAir which spoke to the very issue of stratification within society, but at the hands of Obama and his liberals. Any stratitification resulting from conservatism is a functional outcome derived from the nature of society, not something that happens by design. Conservatives do not legislate the promotion of stratification, in fact, often the opposite is true. Consider Margaret Thatcher’s decision to allow residents to buy their own social housing, in both the U.K. and the U.S., it is the right that propose allowing parents to choose the school of their choice through voucher programs, a measure the left strongly oppose. The HotAir article I referred to earlier makes it very clear just how Obama and his Congressional buddies are dividing up the country into the “haves” and the “should be kept in their places”:
On Healthcare:
* The Peasant Plan: The Obama Administration is trying, inexorably, to force “the American street” into a “public” (read: socialized) healthcare system.
* The “Haves” Plan: Congress and their union benefactors are making sure it (and its benefactors) are exempt from Obamacare. Expect the rest of the elites to follow suit.
Education:
* The Peasant Plan: The Obama Administration wasted no time in cutting DC’s wildly-successful school voucher plan. And Obama’s Democrat allies around the nation are busy trying to roll back charter schools, open enrollment laws, voucher plans and school choice in general, in particular in the communities that need them most, the inner cities and the various Indian reservations; while these plans are often wildly successful, they sap jobs from the teachers’ union – and that’s much more important than educating the children. To be fair, it is a jobs stimulus plan – for public school teachers. Not to mention all the people who’ll have to deal with the failure of our public school system. And India and China.
* The “Haves” Plan: Being “Haves”, they send their kids to private schools (or, for the lesser “haves”, to public schools in areas with fewer of the social problems caused by three generations of using the inner city as a warehouse for other “have nots”.
Food and drink:
# The Peasant Plan: McDonald’s – the fine dining of choice for middle-class Americans who judge restaurants by whether there’s a playland for the kids to run around in – stands to get taxed back to the stone age.
# The “Haves” Plan: No special taxes for the high-end restaurants, like the ones in DC where those who pull the levers of government dine.* The Peasant Plan: Soda pop – the cheap opiate caffeinate of the masses – is in line for punitive taxes to “pay for obesity”.
* The “Haves” Plan: Starbucks – home of the fat-bomb froux-froux coffee beverages that fuel the Administration’s kids’ all-night policy-mongering sessions – goes forth blissfully untaxed. Live and latte live, I guess.
Transport and energy:
* The Peasant Plan: “Clunkers” – affordable used cars – are actively harassed off the road via “Cap and Trade” energy taxes, implemented to attempt to force people off the roads and into cramped, perpetually-late or broken-down public transit systems.
* The “Haves” Plan: Hybrid vehicles – which are presently hideously expensive to buy, and moreso to maintain, and are thus the province of the well-off – are subsidized.
The left have given us social housing, public healthcare, equalised education (which reduces standards) and a welfare state that denies ambition and motivation. All this is done under the self-serving pretext of “caring”. In truth it is about absolving oneself of one’s own guilt at being rich and ensuring that poor place are kept in their place (ie not near the rich people).
I would just like to finish by quoting shockwaver in full who makes this point so much more eloquently:
your implication in the use of “entrenchment” is exactly backward from modern day conservatism. stratification is the result, not the goal. And it’s not a static stratification either, at least up to the 95-percentile, but more akin to a geologic one except the scale of time is years, not eons, with the whole system constantly churning.
the U.S. is known for its remarkable vertical social and economic mobility. my sphere is filled with success stories of those with humble origins in numbers not found in any of the socialist countries that i have visited. these stories are not restricted to the field of science but permeate all of the productive part of our society. where i see the most generational stratification is in the effete intellectual community where theoreticians pontificate about thing about which they have no practical knowledge.
and the belief that conservatism is about entrenchment of wealth is laughable on its face. anyone who lives in this country knows to a certainty that the wealth is not controlled by conservatives. just look at the party affiliation in the richest congressional districts or look at the backgrounds of the financial gurus on wall street who all come from the ivy league schools and have a stranglehold they are unwilling to release.
the biggest popular lie about conservatism is that it is the party of the rich when in fact it occupies the great middle of America. i admit that there is correlation of income with conservatism in middle America but it is liberals who populate the extremes: the very wealthy (just visit the tony part of any major American city) and the poor whom they demagogue by constantly telling them that they are stuck in their circumstances until the government can get them out.
to me, socialism is about equalizing results independent of effort. conservatism is about being allowed to succeed. simply put, it’s the conservative part of our social structure that has allowed me to make a better life for myself and my children while the socialistic part would deny me that. i will not bore you with my story; it is enough to say that it started low socio-economically and it’s our system that allowed me to get ahead without any government help.
one fundamental flaw in socialism is that it does not acknowledge that unearned “success” is no success at all. i strongly believe, in principle, that socialism destroys initiative and that society suffers because of it. you know, it’s that rising tide thing — except in this case, it’s a lowering tide.
socialism is compassion blind to its ultimate consequences and it fails. conservatism is harsher but it works.
Jul
6
Meritocratic vs Democratic
Filed Under American Politics, British Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 59 Comments
I was struck by a paragraph in Ross Douthat’s latest column in the New York Times about Sarah Palin:
Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.
My question is, do the two ideas of meritocratic and democratic necessarily oppose each other? Is one preferable to another?
Whilst I’m a strong believer in a meritocratic society (all conservatives should be), I increasingly believe that our meritocratic elites are letting us, the people, down. Whether it is because of the dubious climate change assertions, the maternalistic approach of government and the evident incompetence and corruption of those in power whilst claiming their own intelligence as qualification, I have developed my conservatism from paternalistic toryism to the redstate democratic belief that the people are best able to run themselves and not the government.
So if you’re interested, feel free to discuss meritocracy v Democracy, the elites v the people.
NB You can use Obama and Palin as the models for the two positions if you like, but please try to keep it to substance and not try to personalise it.
Jul
6
The Theory of Political Relativism
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 11 Comments
By Original Tony
As my interest in politics has grown over the last few years I have struggled to analyse what drives a person towards a political viewpoint, but at last I have come up with a sort of chemical formula.
The Republican
1. A person who loves his home and country more than the rewards of political gain.
2. A family person.
3. Perhaps less articulate or educated than a Democrat
4. More ‘earthy’ than intellectual (likes hunting and fishing)
5. Has a grade C average at school but is a quick learner and often ends up running his own business, perhaps employing A-graders and Democrats!
6. Is a tireless physical worker
7. He runs the factories, shops and small businesses of middle America.
8. He favours religion in his life. Despises PC and to a certain extent, multi-culturalism
9. Treasures conservative values, like the constitution and saluting the flag.
10. Despises laziness and any system that will reward the lazy.
11. Is afraid of mass immigration destroying the familiar feel of the land.
12. Will accept frugality.
The Democrat
1. A person who loves personal gain more than the country.
2. A family person but will commit adultery more than a Republican.
3. Very artistic, intelligent in the sense that high IQ’s can be attained. Cerebral.
4. Loves debating, thinking and ordering others around without doing the work themselves.
5. A poor administrator.
6. A big spender.
7. Tolerates…no accepts and compensates, the lazy and useless as a panacea for guilt generated by personal excesses
8. He governs corporations and industry, often without ever having worked in it. Quite often, is an employee of a Republican in the Industrial sector.
9. Will readily undermine traditional values for ideological reasons.
10. Will take down others before ‘losing his own’
11. Feels that PC and multi-culturalism is the way forward
The more I read blogs and enter into debates, or even chat to people, the quicker I can slot people into either one of these moulds. I almost have it down to a fine art now.
Jun
24
A Change Of Perception
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 23 Comments
By Original Tony
I have just looked at the video clip that Cabbie posted called ‘The Pacific’, along the lines of the excellent ‘A band of brothers’. I am thrilled that series is being made because I love contemporary history, especially WW2 and am pleased Tom Hank’s and Steven Spielberg have collaborated one more time in this genre.There were two things that caught my ear in the clip.
One of the characters was asked what he believes in; is it God or what? The answer was ‘I believe in a bullet’.
The lead actor, well I assume it was him, replied, ‘I believe in this war because it is just’, or words to that effect. He implied the USA had the moral high ground.
What has happened to the West in general and the USA in particular, whereby people used to support their soldiers in wars they considered ‘just’ but do not do so today?
Very few people demonstrated or complained when the USA went to war in 1941; very few complained when the Korean war was fought in the 50’s but ever since Vietnam a class of ‘whiners’ and ‘complainers’ seems to have arisen. A class of people that feel despots or dictators are no longer worth removing, that they can just sit there torturing their people in the same way dictators of the 30’s and 40’s did.
Why have people lost their moral courage and why so much name-calling and name-blaming in the media? Why are there such divergent views on the USA’s foreign policy today?
The other thing is that in old movies the troops used to pray and even in this video clip God is mentioned, before being trashed by the comment ‘I believe in a bullet’.
I ask therefore, has the death of God in America become the cause of the decay of the ‘moral high ground’ and has the media and its pundits become the New Testament? Why are despots allowed to reign unfettered today; Saddam being the exception as he was removed beacuse of oil?
Jun
23
The Left’s Comfort with Dictators.
Filed Under American Politics, Liberalism | 48 Comments
Andy McCarthy has a post up at The Corner in which he expresses his belief that Obama is comfortable not engaging in Iran because he shares a common anti-American cause with Ahmedinejad I don’t want to comment on that particular part of his post, it’s too polarising a point that cannot be proven and results in circular arguments. What I did want to comment on though was this particular passage:
The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society. In this he is no different from his allies like the Congressional Black Caucus and Bill Ayers, who have shown themselves perfectly comfortable with Castro and Chàvez. Indeed, he is the product of a hard-Left tradition that apologized for Stalin and was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists (and that, in Soros parlance, saw George Bush as a bigger terrorist than bin Laden).
Andrew Sullivan, unsurprisingly takes issue, calling it “seriously unhinged”. But here’s the thing, leaving aside the Obama bit which I admit is subjective and for which the evidence is certainly contestable, the rest of what Andy McCarthy says in that statement is true.
The left were apologists for Stalin and soviet communism; just look at the furore at Nixon’s exposure of Alger Hiss. The Congressional Black Caucus did go to meet Fidel Castro, Bobby Rush found him “endearing”. Bill Ayers thinks that Hugo Chavez is creating something “new and humane”, whilst Sean Penn thinks Chavez is a “great man”. But this is not a new tradition for the left. As I’ve stated in a comment thread, the pre-war progressive left in America idolised Benito Mussolini, who literally knocked heads together to get the trains to run on time. And let us not forget the ubiquitousness of Che Guevara posters, not only in student bedrooms, but on the walls of Obama campaign offices. And then, of course there is the ‘noble’ leftist George Galloway, who not only fawns over Saddam Hussein but acts as an apologist for Ahmedinejad too.
Now before anyone starts shouting at me, I’m well aware that the right have historically reached accommodations with despots too. But I believe there is a difference. For the right, these are pragmatic accommodations, either for foreign policy realpolitik reasons or for economic ones. But the left have a much more idolatrous relationship with dictators. They admire the rigid adherence to socialist doctrine, they empathise with the anti-Israeli and anti-American stance of self-proclaimed anti-Imperialists and they get very excited by despots who profess to be fighting the class struggle, who thumb their noses at global capitalism whilst all the time enjoying the opulence of power. But to admire the perpetrators of despotism means closing ones eyes to the realities, the oppression of the people and this is where the integrity of socialists and liberals falls down. They uniquely claim to represent the downtrodden and oppressed. But this representation is a sham, because when faced with a real world personification of their ideologies and values, the oppressed suddenly become irrelevant, sacrificed to the righteousness of class struggle.
May
18
Oh Dear! Liberals Are Better Bloggers Than Conservatives
Filed Under Conservatism, Liberalism | 7 Comments
So says Nate Silver (a liberal blogger by the way).
So come on Israel and THX, it seems I need your posts.
May
18
Obama On The Irony Of Faith
Filed Under Conservatism, Liberalism | 5 Comments
As you will see from my comments in the Obama commencement speech video post, I was underwhelmed by his speech. There was too much sanctimony, too much focus on the inequities in life. However, the passage that I quote below really struck me.
Remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It’s the belief in things not seen. It’s beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what he asks of us. Those of us who believe must trust that his wisdom is greater than our own.
I think the doubt that Obama is referring to is our greatest opportunity. For those of faith, the uncertainty relates to our relationship with God and “what he asks of us”. But for those of us without faith, a similar uncertainty can be relevant to the way we live our lives. Faith is about working ones way through the maze of uncertainty of God’s will in the hope of living a moral meaningful life. Now I maybe on shaky theological ground here, but to me the journey is more important than the destination. For non-believers, the uncertainty arises from ones relationship with the world around us. What is our role? What is our relationship with others? Where will we end up? Again there is a maze to be negotiated, and again it is the journey that will define us. Will we meet challenges with integrity and from a moralistically consistent position or will we take the Machiavellian route and cheat our way through the maze?
Obama talks about the irony of faith. What I think he has done is unintentionally alluded to the irony of progressivism. The liberal progressive denies the very essence of progress, that it is an action and not a result. Society can not be improved through top down imposition. It can only be improved through a consensual awakening and that awakening can only happen once we have journeyed through the maze.
May
15
Anonymous Liberal
Filed Under American Politics, Liberalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I ‘d just like to recommend an excellent blog, anonymousliberal.com. Whilst it is clearly liberal in it’s content, I like the fact that it is informative (see this post on healthcare reform), fairly free of partisan noise and doesn’t resort to the ‘conservatives are rednecks’ level of ad hominem attack that are a feature of too many liberal blogs.