Liberals and Latter-Day Conservatives

Following up on the idea of having a sane opposition...

I really don't think conservatism is crazy by nature. On the contrary, traditional conservatism embodies a kind of modesty and intellectual restraint that's easy to admire. Contemporary American conservatism seems to be another matter.

Liberals aren't opposed to tax cuts. But they're also not opposed to tax increases. It depends on what we're trying to do in what circumstances. The question of just what sort of tax scheme is the best way for achieving our goals depends on the facts, and there's no good reason to think the answer is always the same. Conservatives these days seem to think, as a friend of mine put it, that tax cuts really can cure wooden legs, but that once your wooden leg is cured, you'll need another tax cut.

Liberals don't believe that people shouldn't be able to get rich. There are, after all, some very rich liberals. But liberals don't think that "economic liberty" is the only social value. For conservatives, "economic liberty" is a rallying cry.

Of course, conservatives don't think that economic liberty is the only value either. But non-libertarian conservatives tend to think the state should weigh in on matters that go to the core of how people think about themselves. There's a more empirical and more conservative side to liberalism: we can sometimes find out -- as we have with homosexuality -- that our traditional prejudices were just that, and ought to be abandoned.

Liberals believe in private property, and they think there's something to the idea that when we pay taxes, the state is taking "our" money. But liberals also take seriously the idea that "property" is a complicated collection of rights, and that property rights don't mean much outside the legal framework that defines their limits, facilitates trading them, and allows for the well-functioning operation of commerce.

Perhaps the biggest difference is also the most "philosophical." Conservatives believe in small government. Liberals don't. That's different from saying liberals think government is best when it's biggest. But liberals believe that government can make people's lives better, and that it's perfectly appropriate for government to do just that. The idea of turning government into something that can be drowned in a bathtub, to use Grover Norquist's phrase, strikes liberals as puerile and perverse.

Sometimes this will mean that the wealthiest won't be as wealthy as they might otherwise have been. Sometimes it may mean that people who are merely comfortable rather than genuinely wealthy end up with less in their pockets than they might have. It depends on what we end up getting out of the bargain. Most liberals would say, for example, that if we could provide meaningful health-care security for that sort of trade-off, it would be worth it. Conservatives are a lot less willing to agree.

The larger point is this: liberalism is essentially a kind of pluralism. It's not just that liberals believe in a "pluralistic society." Liberals are pluralists about political values. Yes: economic liberty is good. So is economic security. Yes: recognizing the wisdom of local communities to solve their own problems is good. So is recognizing that some problems call for large-scale coordinated efforts. Yes: stable, thriving communities matter. So does recognizing that we shouldn't be too quick to judge a priori what thriving looks like.

This might suggest that liberalism is just common sense. That would be an over-reach. Traditional conservatism draws heavily on what rightly might be called common sense. There's room for reasoned disagreement between common-sense liberals and common-sense conservatives. However, what's come to be called "movement conservatism" is a different sort of beast. It's a beast on the lookout for bogeymen, obsessed with a single economic recipe, supremely convinced of the unerring wisdom of free markets, but oddly interested in people's non-economic inclinations.

I've heard it claimed that there's no coherent liberal philosophy. If "Philosophy" is spelled with a big "P," that's as it should be. Political wisdom is a dappled thing, slogan-shy and adaptive in the best sense. In any case, if the alternative is what passes for conservatism in the United States these days, the less "philosophy" the better.