A summary: liberalism is characterized by an emphasis on personal freedom balanced by the common good. It's as prone to nannyism as conservatism, but I think the motivations are more wholesome. (If you don't believe conservatism is prone to nannyism, you haven't been paying attention.) The problem with liberalism in this regard is that it wants everyone to conform voluntarily, and if they won't, liberals will pass laws to insure that they do. Conservatives won't bother with the voluntary part. This is the sort of thing conservatives come up with.
Liberals are skeptical, particularly about strong leaders. By way of contrast, Josh Marshall, in his follow-up to the post I linked to yesterday, points out a significant characteristic of the right:
President Bush [is] an epochal figure, a man of destiny in a grand historical struggle who has powers to answer to grander than Congress or the constitution.
I remember Clarence Thomas, I believe it was, in his Senate confirmation hearings, stating that he believed in a "higher law," which, if I had been in that chamber, would have diqualified him in my eyes immediately. For a Supreme Court justice, there can be no "higher law" than the Constitution. Liberals are willing to let the Constitution be the "sacred document" that forms the foundation of our society. Conservatives seem to need a god of some sort. Perhaps it's just that they can't bring themselves to trust humanity to that great an extent, whereas liberals are all about trusting people to do the right thing.
If you think Marshall's making this up, note this comment reported by Glenn Greenwald:
Boston Herald columnist Jules Crittenden assures us that salvation is imminent, in a post solemnly entitled "On Reflection":
George Bush will address us tonight, and show us the way forward.
We need merely place our Faith in the Strong and Great Leader and everything will good:
Tonight, our president is expected, once again, to defy the logic of polls and popularity, and dole out the bitter medicine. What must be done. What should have been done a long time ago. I remain confident in our future and the future of Iraq, because for now, we have a president who will do this.
Conservatism, particularly the messianic, evangelically tinged conservatism of today's far right, is prone to authoritarianism and hero-worship -- and frankly, they don't have a very good record in picking heroes. Remember, in 1776, it was the conservatives who wanted to be ruled by a king. Liberals find this sort of adulation suspicious, at best, and are much more prone to be looking at reality -- i.e., what has he/she actually done? (OK -- on the reality issues, the right wing has George W. Bush, the left wing has PETA. That just supports my ongoing contention that the extremes tend to meet in an area that has nothing to do with right or left.)
I'm not sure that the Republican party has been "hijacked" by the Christianists. I think that the Republicans always had that potential because they are, in effect, the party of received wisdom. They prefer a strong executive, while liberals prefer the brawling mess that is Congress. The Republicans move in lockstep, while the Democrats can't come up with a coherent agenda. (Sidebar and explication: A fault in contemporary discourse: the idea that the forms override the substance. In this example, to have an agenda doesn't say anything. The value of having an agenda depends entirely on content. Bush has an agenda. It's repellent to anyone who believes in what this country has always stood for, but he has one.)
What I find remarkable, Andrew Sullivan and other apologists notwithstanding, is conservatism's poverty of ideas. Liberalism can deal with rational argument based on empirical evidence. That's the basic mode. It's not mistake that this country is a product of the Enlightenment -- if it weren't for classical liberalism, there would be no USA as we know it. Conservatism, with its basis in received wisdom and tradition, is ill-equipped to deal with the rapidly changing circumstances of life in general, not to mention life in the contemporary world. It falls back on "realism" and "pragmatism" because the world doesn't behave the way it should to a conservative's way of thinking, so the theory goes out the window.
Liberalism is the basis of America. It always has been -- it's that basic thrust toward rule by the governed and the inclusion of everyone in that system that goes back to Andrew Jackson, if not before. It's been an incremental progress, but the basic idea has always been the same. Conseratives, by their very nature, are suspicious of the American system of government. (Granted, both the left and right have trouble with basic concepts such as minding their own business, but I don't think that's a matter of political philsophy, just that we are, biologically, social animals, even though theortetically we may admire the rugged individualist as he has become an American archetype -- Daniel Boone, for example, who I think would have been appalled at today's conservatives. The Puritans would be delighted.)
OK -- so it turned out to be more about conservatives than liberals.
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