05.05.09
Conservative vs Liberal
For some time I have been playing with the idea that good political decisions can only be made when the issues are framed by the right thesis and antithesis. When these are all categorically wrong, a good decision is impossible. When even one side is wrong, the chance of a good decision probably falls below half. The goal of this piece is to create a list of interests that frame political decisions and assign their defense to Liberal or Conservative . The idea is that when liberal and conservative points of view are engaged in defending the right sorts of ideals and poltical principles, there is some hope that political dialogue can find good solutions generally consistent with the broad interests of the body politic (i.e. all the people affected by legislation created by these debates.)
| Conservative | Liberal |
|---|---|
| Individual Strength & Achievement | Institutional Strength and Effectiveness, Especially Public Ones |
| Right Action | Right Thought |
| Educate for Commerce & Industry | Educate for Shared Culture & Good Government |
| Trust Myself, My Group, My Country | Be Skeptical. Seek Useful Ideas. Seek Friends, and Make Allies |
| Depend on the Known, Old, Trusted | Seek New Modes of Thought, Expression, Action |
| Be Tough, Be Virtuous | Be Smart, Be Cool |
| Government Should Leave Me Alone | Government Should Help Society Work Better |
| Conserve Capital | Protect Environment, Protect Laborers |
| Wealth Lies in Ownership & Productivity | Wealth Lies in Commerce & Efficient Distribution |
Take, for example, the question of education. On one hand education provides shared experiences, shared values, shared culture that allows the possibility of a civil dialogue on issues. It also, properly executed, would give us the tools to look at questions from different points of view and to better assess arguments on the basis of the merits of the evidence. It would allow us to reach informed decisions rather than simply aligning with our group. On the other hand, education must make us productive and effective in the economic sphere. Otherwise our society becomes weak and servile in an economic sense. If we build a society that is especially weak in a liberal sense, then we all become slaves of a wicked, corrupt, but highly effective central authority.
Sadly, America has a second rate education system that is worse at preparing Americans for all academic pursuits than are most European systems. And we have a system that is worse at preparing Americans for all vocational/technical pursuits than certainly the German educational system. By no measure is it first rate.
There are many reasons for the decline, many of which have to do with adult’s attitudes about education. But some of the reason lies in the Reagan era decision to dumb down education to make Americans good only at the three R’s Restin’, Recitation, and Revival Meetin’s. There’s no thinkin’ involved. Because that threatens the powers that be. And, evidently the same people imagined that vocational training just makes workers more expensive, not more productive. ( It’s thinking as old as anglophone economics: it’s one of the great fallacies of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. )
The problem arises because conservatives do not have a position on education that drives us to be more productive as people. Conservatives do not argue that we need to be better in vocational training. And they argue against the utility of science. This is strictly medieval thinking. And it threatens to eliminate the middle classes. The problem of inferior education also arises because liberals tend to undervalue the social, political, and cultural values and tools of thought that are rightly taught in liberal arts colleges, in high schools, and in elementary schools.
Getting the educational system to work is more than getting public policy straightened out. But that step is necessary.
Turn next to the issue of individual liberty. America has very nearly come off the rails entirely. One of the great problems of modern conservatism since about 1880 is that conserving individual liberty has been at odds with conserving capital. Large institutions find convenience and profit in trampling the property rights, the environmental rights, the privacy rights and personal liberties of individuals. In matters of labor and commerce the Democratic party has tended to represent the interests of individuals against corporations.
But conservatives have represented themselves as the party of personal liberty - freedom from government intrusion - even as they attempted to eliminate all checks on abitrary executive power agianst individuals. There was precious little space for liberals to defend personal liberty. Fortunately this is a category that has had some constitutional protection. But no attribute of political life can be preserved in the absence of deep support both in individuals and in institutions.
These two examples raise the question of how well all of the interests of a democratic society can be represented by a two party system. For it is inevitable that conflicts of logical consistency will arise from time to time within a party’s framework making it impossible for a party to effectively advocate for issues that are rightly in its scope of interest.
I set out in an attempt to describe a kind of canonical policy framework (in its form now, far from complete) that would frame issues in a way that would lead to productive policy debate and good decisions on public policy. It still seems like a good exercise. But it might prove that no two party system is capable of managing all policies over the whole univers of political discourse in a way that is both consistent and productive of good results.
This is just a very quick sketch of the idea. My hope is to expand upon this in the future, both by adding items to the chart and by explaining the entries. The main goal is to provide principled positions on big-issue sorts of policy that allow productive policy debate. We note in passing that we have tried to frame positions on both sides of the aisle in positive terms because the public “goods” that each side is defending are worthy of defense.
Perhaps this exercise will lead to a strong argument that a two party system is incapable of reaching a good decision a large portion of the time because of the logical limitations on internal consistency and lack of independence between category areas.