Part of the problem is that the two terms are often defined by political opponents – which means, of course, that the definition is tweaked just enough to make it wrong by definition. Here’s an example, from Phyllis Schlafly’s essay. She describes conservatism as “sticking with unchanging principles based on the Constitution the way it was written, the Judeo-Christian moral code, limited government, victory over Communism, American sovereignty, military superiority, lower taxes, less government regulation, private enterprise, and ‘morning in America.’” In contrast, “Liberal dogma demands support of Big Government…a reduced national defense, and submission to a web of international commitments.”
Well, gee, liberals (with their dogma) don’t believe in strong national defense? They want to submit like meek little mice to the rest of the world? They support Big Government, which must mean they hate freedom? And Ann Coulter says they’re traitors who hate America? Gosh, but those liberals sure do sound horrible, don’t they? Right – unless, of course, you ascribed to a more neutral definition along the lines of Wikipedia:
“…Liberalism emphasizes individual rights. It seeks a society characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on power (especially of government and religion), the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports free private enterprise, and a transparent system of government in which the rights of all citizens are protected.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
The media’s rhetorical free-for-all in which, if you don’t like something, you can just redefine it at will, essentially means that lots of people are talking, but they aren’t necessarily using the same language.
Beastly Ideologies
So let’s try to figure these beasts called liberals and conservatives. As far as I can tell, liberalism isn’t so much an innovative ideology anymore as something progressive and defensive. It pushes forward on issues like gay rights, but continually has to defend itself from conservative attack. But is conservatism really heroic? Doubtful: If all conservatives do is play Knights Who Say “Ni” (or, rather, “No”) to anything suggested by liberals, then not only is the adjective “reactionary” appropriate, but the ol’ canard about liberals lacking ideas is misplaced. Liberals get the ideas, conservatives shoot them down.
The situation is worse than that for conservatives, though. For one thing, they’re beset by a deadly contradiction: You can’t simultaneously claim to support limited government AND government interference in personal affairs like reproductive health and marriage. If you think the government should mind its own business, it’s quite logical to accept that it’s not up to the government to tell people who they can or can’t marry just as it’s not up to politicians to tell women what to do with their bodies. Hmm. Small government. Personal responsibility. Conservatism that sounds awfully liberal? Maybe Rob Dreher (see link above) is right to bring up a quote by Alasdair MacIntyre that “contemporary debates…are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals.”
Where’s the Dialogue?
Then we can really muddy the waters by bringing in the “neos:” neoliberalism and neoconservatism. The former never gets called out by name; it refers to the encouragement of really free free-market capitalism. Neoconservatism, however, has further fractured what passes for a conservative movement, having begun with liberals new to conservatism and morphed over time to Bush’s neoconservatives, essentially socially conservative neoliberals who live up to John Kenneth Galbraith’s view that “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
But wait: Hasn’t this column taken a turn in a direction I often criticized? Only insofar as I am demonstrating how it’s impossible to meaningfully talk about conservatism or liberalism without indulging gross generalizations. Yet that’s what people do. What we have, really, are pop-conservatism and pop-liberalism, vast soufflés cooked up by pundits in a media for which profits are king and spectacle reigns supreme.
It could be that Michael Lind is perfectly justified in suggesting that the words “conservative” and “liberal” have been reduced to meaning, respectively, partisan Republican and partisan Democrat. This actually fits nicely into my view that pop-ideologies are really quick and dirty shorthands for a constellation of issues whose association is more coincidence than the disciplined application of philosophical principles. And with an illusion of uniformity foisted on philosophically divergent thinkers and commentators, we get easily digested sound-bite pop-ideologies and uncivil rhetoric that yields such gems as joking about poisoning Supreme Court Justices and willy-nilly accusations of treason, sissiness and moral laxitude. After all, the reason shock jocks are on the air keeps pop-ideologies alive in the minds of commentators and their audiences. They provide easy targets that are quickly redefined to suit any agenda while offering feel-good Orwellian minutes of irrationality that hinder rather than foster productive dialogue.