Is "conservative" beginning to become the new "liberal"?

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@DigitalC

I would actually be more interested in what his conservative positions are.

Pro-austerity and Europhobia.

[BrainGlutton]

@cornopean

liberal used to mean something akin to libertarian. that is why you hear people nowadays distinguishing “classical liberals” from liberals. What today qualifies as a liberal is very UNliberal if by liberal you mean classical liberalism.

A (surprisingly!) good place to tease out all those threads is here.

[BrainGlutton]

@iiandyiiii

And many things today that count as “Conservative” are not actually conservative.

Indeed. No conservative would ever shout “End the Fed!” or “Molon Labe!” or “Drown it in a bathtub!” Conservatives are cautious. Conservatives are suspicious of abrupt changes and radical experiments. Today’s American RWs demand them. They are not conservatives, they are radical reactionary revolutionaries.

[BrainGlutton]

@Exapno_Mapcase

We can do a bit of arguing when progressive was supplanted by liberal, but I don’t think you can push that off later than FDR.

Progressive-Era progressivism was really an upper-middle-class good-government movement with some racist/ethnocentric overtones and a whole lot of class prejudice. And the mid-century progressivism of Henry Wallace meant shilling for Soviet Communism. Nowadays, however, “progressive” means a political position well to the left of “liberal” and well to the right of “socialist,” i.e., what is called “social-democratic” in Europe.

[BrainGlutton]

@dracoi

It’s like the Obamacare debate. One side sells death panels and the collapse of civilization. The other side sells unicorns and rainbows with no downside. All I’m sure of is that I’m being lied to.

Why? Look at Canada, with full-on single-payer health care. Unicorns and rainbows and no downside. No, really. I was once at a science-fiction WorldCon in Toronto, and I had the chance to ask the panelists at a panel discussion (forget the subject), “Is there any downside to the Canadian health-care system?” They all replied, “No.” “No.” “No.” “No.” “No.” With shrugs, and an air of faint surprise at the question. And nobody in the room, which held at least 200 people, most of them Canadians I’m sure, ventured a contrary opinion. Now, granted, SF fans are not a representative sample of the general population of any country. They’re smarter.

[BrainGlutton]

@jtgain

It would be like saying that liberalism is bad because every failed new experiment was proposed by a liberal.

Actually, some failed new experiments were proposed by conservatives, e.g., “faith-based initiatives.”

[BrainGlutton]

@jtgain

None of this shows anything except that both philosophies are necessary in a society. With conservatism nothing would change to meet new demands, and with liberalism everything would change and then re-change on a dime, and we would all be slapping our stomachs with our own dicks chasing the next fad. Both ideas are sound, even though imperfect.

No, sir. It is not true that each party is necessary to correct the other’s excesses. It would be true, perhaps, if our two-party system were the Democrats v. the Socialists; but conservatives/Republicans have nothing whatsoever of value to offer America or any country.

[BrainGlutton]

@Chronos

I didn’t mean to imply that. Both, as you say, are necessary. Which is part of the reason the current crop of Republicans are so troubling: We need sane conservatives, and they’re not it.

We do not need sane nor any conservatives.

[deltasigma]

This may be a little off topic, but historically, how long does it take before gerrymandering advantages begin to dissipate? I would guess by mid-decade you should at least start to see cracks and after the recent GOP-teabagger fiasco, I would expect that to be accelerated significantly. First because you had certain amount of inherent tension between the factions anyway but second because now, with PAC contributors suitably alarmed and wary of truly lunatic fringe element of the party, campaign financing should be a different game this cycle.

I would expect to see some really ugly primary battles. I would then expect the result of those to be lower voter turn out at the polls for the GOP since disillusioned voters tend to be less inclined to vote.

edit: to tie this into the OP - yes, conservative is definitely the new liberal, or more appropriately, the new commie, pinko liberal.

[drewtwo99]

Couldn’t agree with BrainGlutton any more. There was a time when I thought that a one-party state for our country would be terrible, and so no matter how wacky and harmful the republicans were, at least they kept the democrats honest and helped reduce corruption in some rivalry way. I’ve since grown up and realized that the country would be a far better place if we had two political parties like liberals and socialists, with the republicans being a chapter or two in the history books.

[glee]

@glee

Just to emphasise that these labels mean completely different things in the US and Europe … what do you call a politician who:

• strongly supports Universal Health Care
• maintains strict gun control (including no guns for home defence, nor for beat police)
• brought gay marriage into law
• is fully prepared to work with an opposition party
• doesn’t believe in Creationism?

David Cameron, leader of the UK Conservative Party

@DigitalC

I would actually be more interested in what his conservative positions are.

Over here, these are Conservative positions.

Cameron also advocates:

• cutting government spending (but not Universal Health Care)
• good relations with the US (Obama policies, not Bush ones)
• free trade
• greater protection for householders v intruders (but not guns)
• tax incentives for married couples

[glee]

@dracoi

It’s like the Obamacare debate. One side sells death panels and the collapse of civilization. The other side sells unicorns and rainbows with no downside. All I’m sure of is that I’m being lied to.

No, Tea Party Republicans lie to you about Universal Health Care (UHC), whilst Democrats can prove it works.

Here in the UK, we’ve had UHC since 1948 (known as the National Health Service.)
The National Health Service is supported by every political party and is immensely popular.

From the link above:
… An independent survey conducted in 2004 found that users of the NHS often expressed very high levels of satisfaction about their personal experience of the medical services. Of hospital inpatients, 92% said they were satisfied with their treatment; 87% of GP users were satisfied with their GP; 87% of hospital outpatients were satisfied with the service they received; and 70% of Accident and Emergency department users reported being satisfied…

[furt]

@DSeid

A few years back the conservative movement had succeeded in making the word “liberal” something that no one in the middle (which really is the vast majority of voters) would want to identify with, protraying “liberal” as synomous with being extreme with some success. Politician ran away from that label.

I put forth that the TP is doing that to the word “conservative” - creating an association between the word and the concept of extremist position … and in the process rehabilitating the “word” liberal as an acceptabe identification for many of the middle, not as extreme of a concept.

Much as you might wish it, this is not the case.

The observation is simple: do left-leaning politicians proudly label themselves “liberal?” With few exceptions (mostly in strongly-progressive jurisdictions), no. They go with “progressive” or else duck the question. Ergo, it is still a word that politicians think voters dislike.

Do right-leaning politicians proudly label themselves “conservative?” With few exceptions (mostly in progressive jurisdictions), yes they very much do. In primaries, they fight to depict themselves as the “real” or “true” conservatives, and they don’t shrink from it in the general. Ergo, it is still a word that politicians think voters like.
Says nothing about the merits of either view, IMO, but it’s glaringly obvious from the rhetoric that “conservative” is still, nationally, a good thing to be seen as.

[CJJ]

@Chronos

I didn’t mean to imply that. Both, as you say, are necessary. Which is part of the reason the current crop of Republicans are so troubling: We need sane conservatives, and they’re not it.

I agree with this, even though I’d probably be labeled a liberal.

IMO the problem isn’t “liberal” or “conservative”, it’s all forms of “fundamentalism”. Right now there’s a large group of fundamentalist conservatives running the Republican party, and that’s a problem.

[Debaser]

The consensus in this thread that Conservative = “Resistance to change” is a bit flawed, I think.

“Conservative” and “Liberal” are both concepts that are more complex than a short slogan. However, if you wanted to pick one for Conservative I’d choose either of these before resistance to change:

Personal responsibility.
Reduced size of government.

Back to the topic of the OP, I would say that the label “Conservative” is a bit tarnished recently by the actions of hard line GOP members such as the Tea Party. But it’s the “Tea Party” label that is tarnished possibly beyond repair. The accusations of racism have stuck to the point that even Romney distanced himself from the label during the last election.

I’d say “Tea Party” is the new Liberal. Conservative remains a label that most aren’t afraid of using.

[Debaser]

@deadtwo99

Couldn’t agree with BrainGlutton any more. There was a time when I thought that a one-party state for our country would be terrible, and so no matter how wacky and harmful the republicans were, at least they kept the democrats honest and helped reduce corruption in some rivalry way. I’ve since grown up and realized that the country would be a far better place if we had two political parties like liberals and socialists, with the republicans being a chapter or two in the history books.

Then the country would be bankrupt and ruined. Even MA and CA with their overwhelming Liberal majorities have to elect Republican Governors from time to time to keep the Liberal legislatures in check. A pure one party state wouldn’t be fun to live in regardless of which party would be in charge.

[BrainGlutton]

@Debaser

The consensus in this thread that Conservative = “Resistance to change” is a bit flawed, I think.

“Conservative” and “Liberal” are both concepts that are more complex than a short slogan. However, if you wanted to pick one for Conservative I’d choose either of these before resistance to change:

Personal responsibility.
Reduced size of government.

Well, the problem is that it’s very hard to pin down. From TVTropes:

Problems immediately arise when attempting to define “conservatism” because the term does not refer to any specific single ideology. The word has been used by many different political groups in many different ways, usually peddling wildly-divergent and often flatly-contradictory political programs. Of course, this has to do with the fact that “conserving” the current state of society does mean a different thing in different countries and, more important, different times. Restoring society as it was in the past is a different thing altogether; that would be reactionary.

<snip>

It is when we look at American conservatism that things get confusing. “Conservative” as used in the US is not an ideology, but rather a coalition of many different ideological groups. Many self-proclaimed conservatives are ideologically classical liberals! There are also self-proclaimed Oakeshottians in American conservatism as well, such as Andrew Sullivan.

Religious conservatism is a strong element in American conservatism, but it differs from any of the previous subgroups of conservatism (it is probably closest to Maistre’s branch). Like British-style conservatives, religious conservatives argue that specific traditions are vital for social stability and thus deserve State protection. However, unlike British-style conservatives, they argue that it is adherence to a specific set of religious traditions and moral beliefs that keep society together, and they also (very much unlike British-style conservatives) are not skeptical about the possibility of knowledge. Rather, they argue faith is a means to perfect knowledge. This attitude is neither Enlightenment or Counter-Enlightenment; it is a pre-Enlightenment attitude.

Another American phenomenon is the infamous neoconservatism. Developed during the Seventies, it has been initially described as the ideology of “socialists for Nixon” or a “[US-style] liberal mugged by reality” — former leftists who have moved to the conservative camp after becoming disillusioned with their own. As such, neoconservatism shares tenets of US-style conservatism, such as democracy and free markets, with the progressive attitude and revolutionary tendencies of the Left. Thus, neoconservatives have been known for their approval of welfare and big government. In the economy, they support capitalism but endorse state interventionism. However, neoconservatism has garnered most of its criticism from its foreign policies, where these progressive tendencies resulted in doctrine of belligerency, a disdain for diplomacy, and aggressive promotion of capitalist democracy. Altogether, this might’ve been forgettable, but then the terrorist attack of 9/11 happened, and…

Of course, American conservatism is still fundamentally a coalition of varying ideological groups. Thus, there have been many attempts to bridge these philosophical differences. For instance, Frank Meyer of the conservative National Review magazine argued classical liberals (known as “libertarians” because in the US, “liberal” refers to an electoral coalition of social liberals and social democrats) should argue for the use of classical liberal policies as means to conservative goals. William F. Buckley Jr, also of the National Review, argued in a very Oakeshott-like manner that conservatism is fundamentally based on skepticism and caution about new ideas, and thus a preference for tradition and against ideology. However, he also argued for the incorporation of both religious conservatism and classical liberalism, primarily because they all faced the common enemy of Soviet-style communism.

In short, British-style conservatism is characterized by an aversion to rationalistic and/or ideology-based political programs and instead a preference for proven, pragmatic policies in the pursuit of maintaining social order by protecting established traditions from radical change. Latin-style conservatism is British-style taken Up to Eleven with a strong religious and optionally monarchist element. American-style conservatism is based on an unstable coalition of British-style conservatism, religious conservatism, and classical liberalism, in varying proportions depending on numerous variables.

From The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by conservative British journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge:

The exceptionalism of the American Right is partly a matter of its beliefs. The first two definitions of “conservative” offered by the Concise Oxford Dictionary are “adverse to rapid change” and “moderate, avoiding extremes.” Neither of these seems a particularly good description of what is going on in America at the moment. “Conservatism” – no less than its foes “liberalism” or “communitarianism” – has become one of those words that are now as imprecise as they are emotionally charged. Open a newspaper and you can find the word used to describe Jacques Chirac, Trent Lott, the Mullah Omar and Vladimir Putin. Since time immemorial, conservatives have insisted that their deeply pragmatic creed cannot be ideologically pigeonholed.

But, in philosophical terms at least, classical conservatism does mean something. The creed of Edmund Burke, its most eloquent proponent, might be crudely reduced to six principles: a deep suspicion of the power of the state; a preference for liberty over equality; patriotism; a belief in established institutions and hierarchies; skepticism about the idea of progress; and elitism. Winston Churchill happily accepted these principles: he was devoted to nation and empire, disinclined to trust the lower orders with anything, hostile to the welfare state, worried about the diminution of liberty and, as he once remarked ruefully, “preferred the past to the present and the present to the future.”

To simplify a little, the exceptionalism of modern American conservatism lies in its exaggeration of the first three of Burke’s principles and contradiction of the last three. The American Right exhibits a far deeper hostility towards the state than any other modern conservative party. . . . The American right is also more obsessed with personal liberty than any other conservative party, and prepared to tolerate an infinitely higher level of inequality. (One reason why Burke warmed to the American revolutionaries was that, unlike their dangerous French equivalents, the gentlemen rebels concentrated on freedom, not equality.) On patriotism, nobody can deny that conservatives everywhere tend to be a fairly nationalistic bunch. . . . Yet many European conservatives have accepted the idea that their nationality should be diluted in “schemes and speculations” like the European Union, and they are increasingly reconciled to dealing with national security on a multilateral basis. American conservatives clearly are not.

If the American Right was merely a more vigorous form of conservatism, then it would be a lot more predictable. In fact, the American Right takes a resolutely liberal approach to Burke’s last three principles: hierarchy, pessimism and elitism. The heroes of modern American conservatism are not paternalist squires but rugged individualists who don’t know their place: entrepeneurs who build mighty businesses out of nothing, settlers who move out West, and, of course, the cowboy. There is a frontier spirit to the Right – unsurprisingly, since so much of its heartland is made up of new towns of one sort of another.

The geography of conservatism also helps to explain its optimism rather than pessimism. In the war between the Dynamo and the Virgin, as Henry Adams characterized the battle between progress and tradition, most American conservatives are on the side of the Dynamo. They think that the world offers all sorts of wonderful possibilities. And they feel that the only thing that is preventing people from attaining these possibilities is the dead liberal hand of the past. By contrast, Burke has been described flatteringly by European conservatives as a “prophet of the past.” Spend any time with a group of Republicans, and their enthusiasm for the future can be positively exhausting.

As for elitism, rather than dreaming about creating an educated “clerisy” of clever rulers (as Coleridge and T.S. Eliot did), the Republicans ever since the 1960s have played the populist card. Richard Nixon saw himself as the champion of the “silent majority.” In 1988 the aristocratic George H.W. Bush presented himself as a defender of all-American values against the Harvard Yard liberalism of Michael Dukakis. In 2000, George W. Bush, a president’s son who was educated at Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School, played up his role as a down-to-earth Texan taking on the might of Washington. As a result, modern American conservatism has flourished not just in country clubs and boardrooms, but at the grass roots – on talk radio and at precinct meetings, and in revolts against high taxes, the regulation of firearms and other invidious attempts by liberal do-gooders to force honest Americans into some predetermined mold.

[Clothahump]

@DSeid

So, as someone just left of center, thank you Tea Party.

You would be a moderate in that case.

[DigitalC]

@Debaser

Back to the topic of the OP, I would say that the label “Conservative” is a bit tarnished recently by the actions of hard line GOP members such as the Tea Party. But it’s the “Tea Party” label that is tarnished possibly beyond repair. The accusations of racism have stuck to the point that even Romney distanced himself from the label during the last election.

I’d say “Tea Party” is the new Liberal. Conservative remains a label that most aren’t afraid of using.

I mostly agree with all of this, but also keep in mind that it is the Tea Party that claims to represent conservatives.

[Debaser]

@DigitalC

I mostly agree with all of this, but also keep in mind that it is the Tea Party that claims to represent conservatives.

Of course they do. Just like any Liberal does. Just ask them!

In all seriousness, I’d say it’s about a fair fight. Conservatives have going for them that this is a center right country and Liberals have the schools and the media as their camp followers.