The meaning of "liberal" and "conservative" in the context of the minimum wage

Great Debates
61

An axiom system has a distinct and technical meaning in math. I’m using it as a metaphor, as a way to express why the two sides can no longer agree on anything.

The evolution of this dichotomy is what I find most interesting. For the first half of the 20th century, there was a general agreement that ran across a large and diverse segment of the elite population that for any job, any industry, any problem there existed what Frederick Taylor called the “One Best Way.” His monomania lay in refining work procedures to distill the most efficient approach to any task. Other engineers copied him, industrialists worshipped him, and his ideas spread around the world. As technology soared exponentially, the notion that all problems could be solved if only people would properly study and understand them was made into a kind of secular religion, which was seemingly proved correct by the astounding American material response to WWII.

This attitude continued for a while after the war, which explains a lot about the 1950s and the reasons that the establishment was so infuriated as well as puzzled by the counterculture in the 1960s. Disagreement wasn’t merely wrongheaded; it was actually blasphemous.

But they should have seen it coming from within. The right and the left never agreed about the basics of how to attack the Depression and the post-war split on the internal dangers of Communism was bitterly opposed from top to bottom. The seeming final victory of liberalism created by embracing civil rights was immediately upended by the failures of Viet Nam. A revitalized conservative movement created a mountain of intellectual support for its view of the world - one that was utterly rejected in every tenet by a liberal movement that saw hypocrisy between word and deed in every conservative position. That solidified in the Reagan years. Every decade has just hardened the lines of that split. Both major parties once had large liberal, moderate, and conservative wings; today every national Democratic politician is to the left of every national Republican politician. They can’t agree on anything because each filters every action through a separate and now long-standing historic filter. Which I call axioms as shorthand. There are two mutually incomprehensible realities.

And Frederick Taylor has been completely discredited and turned into a symbol of lunacy. You can’t have the One Best Way in an era of Continuous Improvement.

What many people want, of course, is An Answer. What do you do about Global Warming, or Immigration, or the Middle East, or Taxes, or Fracking, or any other issue. Give us An Answer. If one side insists there is an Answer and the other insists that you need a hundred small improvements, then nothing ever gets done. That’s where we are, though sometimes the insistence on An Answer comes from one side and sometimes the other.

The debate here is not an argument about facts; it’s an argument about beliefs, beliefs which are set in cement. That we see bifurcated realities is a fact; that we can do nothing until we merge worlds is also a fact. You may be in the middle. If so, you must find it awfully lonely there.

62

That’s one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve ever read. I’m reminded of Grover Norquist’s famous quote about how small government should be: “small enough to drown in the bathtub”. Some conservatives, at least, apparently would prefer to have no government at all, with the possible exception of one whose sole function is bombing other nations. I think most liberals see the function of government as doing only those things that are necessary for a safe, prosperous, and just society.

I’ll give you three. Abortion, gay marriage, and the granting of special exemptions for “religious beliefs” from laws that the rest of us have to follow.

Good. Then there’s no reason to go whining all the way to the Supreme Court over including something so trivial in a health care plan.

63

Conservatives came through. Where are the liberals with the things they believe government shouldn’t try to do anymore? We got prohibition, but alcohol was 80 years ago and marijuana prohibition has never been one of those things that all liberals, or even most, were comfortable with.

the government does literally hundreds of things that liberals think is a pretty good idea. There’s got to be at least one of them where it looks like the program isn’t fulfilling its mission and should be eliminated and replaced with nothing.

Could be that this is the primary difference between liberals and conservatives when it comes to government projects. Conservatives often get it in their heads to have the government do something. When it doesn’t work, conservatives stop supporting it eventually. When a liberal idea doesn’t work, it doesn’t need elimination, it needs reform, or maybe more money. But sometimes government just isn’t cut out to do something, no matter how well intentioned or how well resourced.

64

Exapno- The funny thing is that, before this split you describe took place, immediately after WWII, government really did have their fingers in everything. Eisenhower would have to fall in the conservative camp, yet it was visionary government projects everywhere you looked. The debt was sky high from the war, but so were taxes to pay for it. The highway system was a bold idea, and it was built from the ground up during this time. We spend a fortune rebuilding Europe, and people seemed to be okay with it.

Now I guess we’re just supposed to watch the highway system crumble, then do without it while the poor and unemployed starve, because tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations are the one of the only things conservatives will approve of in terms of government action. Want highways? Dismantle social security and the Post Office is the response.

But I still don’t understand why the author I cite in the OP needs to remind us that, even though Hobby Lobby is paying their employees more than legally necessary, they aren’t bleeding-heart liberals. Heck, in the 60s a person could get a job just about anywhere and make a living wage, and people seemed to go along with it. As the buying power of low-end wages has eroded, conservatives seems to have forgotten that the minimum wage once was a living wage, and resist going back to that (at least via government mandate, which is the only way it will happen on a large scale).

I want to say the author is being sloppy, but I also feel like “conservative” and maybe “liberal”, too, are losing their meaning

65

I say you’re overthinking it. Liberal and conservative are simple epithets; everything is divided into one or the other for shorthand. That’s all there is to it.

66

So it is necessary for a safe, prosperous, and just society for all businesses that offer healthcare to their employees must pay for IUDs. Is that for safety, prosperity, or justice? Apparently it was impossible to have a safe, prosperous, and just society before the invention of the morning after pill

Tax payer funded abortions are a part of the Democrat party platform, gay marriage is entirely a government creation that requires special policing to make sure no one has to have their second choice of bakers on their big day, and allowing freedom of religion is something that this country was built on, not a special right only for the few.

True, but freedom of religion is one of the most important freedoms in the world and worth doing alot more than going to the Supreme Court for.

67

What have conservatives ever pressed the government to do? Except for defense conservatives generally need to be dragged kicking and screaming into any government intervention.

I didn’t know you wanted an exhaustive list of things liberals no longer like the government doing. There’s also farm subsidies, for one. But for the most part things we want the government to do are either things it’s good at or things nobody else would do better. It’s fine to say “get the government out of healthcare” but we’ve had market-based healthcare for decades and it’s a fucking mess.

68

Second choice of baker, take the next bus, eat at the next diner, use the other water fountain, what’s the big deal anyway?

Back in the day, African Americans needed to plan a long trip like they were crossing Death Valley. Fill up the car, have extra tanks in the back, take camping gear and food. Even though you’re traveling through perfectly good towns with serviceable restaurants and motels, you have absolutely no idea whether or not you’ll be served, or where the “next” place that will accept your money is going to be.

It’s a shitty way to live, and as much as religious freedom is important, so is “every man is created equal”. Equal means you don’t have to go from baker to baker trying to find one willing to make you a cake, you don’t have to give up your seat, or hope that the next motel with a vacancy suddenly is full up when you walk in the door.

69

I’d take that “declining to participate in a moral wrong” stance more seriously if they weren’t doing business with the People’s Republic of China, the land of forced abortions.

70

Read this excellent post by Cheesesteak. He was responding to a different point but I think the same argument applies. You either have a nation of laws for the common good or you don’t. Once you start making exceptions for ideologically handpicked special cases, you undermine that principle.

What a fascinating perspective from the far right! Why don’t we try facts instead of conservative spin…

The essence of the Democratic (“Democrat” is not an adjective, but conservatives like to use it that way because it sounds somehow pejorative) platform on this issue stems from the recognition that certain factions will never agree on questions like when life begins or on the balance between abortion and a woman’s rights and they will be fighting about it until hell freezes over. This is a contentious issue with a deep divide between honestly held beliefs and profoundly different philosophical viewpoints.

That being the case, the progressive position is that this is a stellar example of the kind of irreconcilable, philosophical personal and social issue that the government must absolutely stay out of. The conservative viewpoint, of course, is that the government, which they believe should stay out of almost everything else, should wade into this with jackbooted thuggery and force on everybody the position that they “know” is right.

So yeah, this is not just a good example of a problem that liberals want the government to stay out of and conservatives don’t, but also a great example of Republicans’ stunning hypocrisy.

And as far as “tax-payer funded abortions” goes, this is an issue that has long, long been settled in civilized countries. Universal health care is treated as a basic human right. Abortion is a medical procedure and falls under health care. End of story. No one is “forcing” anyone to do anything, as in the conservative ideology on this issue, and no country can be run on the basis of having special interests and random lunatics micromanaging how their tax dollars are spent.

What??? Gay marriage is a “creation” of gay people who want to get married. It has nothing to do with government. The issue at stake here is basic human dignity and the relegation by conservative ideologues of gays to the status of second-class citizens and pariahs. The only “problem” here is the opposition of a shrill but diminishing minority of mostly evangelical fundamentalists. Once again, liberals want the government to stay the hell out of it, but conservatives want the government to wade right in and use any and all powers of the state to enforce the beliefs of the fundies. More stunning hypocrisy. (This was also the point that Cheesesteak responded to.)

You might have asked Jews in the earlier part of the 20th century, or Muslims today, if freedom of religion was actually what “this country was built on”, or whether in fact it’s just a handy way for the majority religion to enforce their superstitious nonsense by force of law. Some of us had an interesting discussion elsewhere in this forum about the need for religious-freedom guarantees at all given the secular freedoms already guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. This is a more complex issue than the first two, where the Republican position is just simply flat-out lunatic fringe, but I provided it as yet a third example where this liberal, at least, believes that government has no business.

71

Abortion is the ending of a human life. The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the strong. To keep gangs from robbing old people, to protect young women, from rapists, to protect innocent from those who would kill. What is weaker than an infant?, or more clearly in need of protection? The liberal position is if I want to kill a baby, then it is jackbooted thuggery to try to stop me. But forcing people to pay for someone else IUD is necessary for a just society. That is just ridiculous.
Not content with just sanctioning abortion, the liberal position is that government needs to pay for it too. Yet this still goes down as keeping the government out of abortion. If the government is writing the checks they could not be more involved unless the were handling the scissors themselves.

If gay marriage has nothing to do with government than why haven’t gays been marrying for decades? The pomp and circumstance of the weddings have always been available, the only difference state sanctioned gay marriage would make is the part where they go to city hall and register with the government.

The RFRA was sponsored by Chuck Shumer, pushed by Ted Kennedy, supported by almost every Democrat in the Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton. Now supporting that bill is “flat out lunatic fringe”. The idea that having the right to practice your religion is a far right idea is show of just how morally and intellectually bankrupt the left is. The new slogan for the Democrat party: “The Bill of Rights is just too damned long”

72

A marriage license is a state-issued document. If gay marriage had nothing to do with the government, SSM advocates would not be trying to get the government to recognize it.

No, liberals do not want the government to stay the hell out of it. Just the opposite is true.

Regards,
Shodan

73

True.

The RFRA is just such a law, passed nearly unanimously, and made as a general statement of universal applicability. It would be a bad idea to undermine that principle for an ideologically picked special case.

74

Well, I’ve taken some time out to ask myself, “Am I just being contrary? Do I seek attention rather than answers?” My conclusion is that I’m sincere, so I’ll bump this for one more go-around.

If everything is divided into “liberal” or “conservative” for shorthand, then it is like the Spanish language in which everything is either male or female- basically a meaningless distinction. Why should everything be one or the other? I simply don’t get it.

Specifically, if you don’t mind, would you address the nub of my OP, which is why the author of this article feels compelled to remind us that the operators of Hobby Lobby are not “bleeding-heart liberals” for choosing, of their own volition, absent any government pressure, to pay their employees more than is mandated by law? Why is that necessarily a conservativism-challenging decision? :confused:

75

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76

Have you read this thread? Haven’t you seen conservatives repeatedly accusing liberals of being mindless slaves to government intervention, something I said in the very first response to your OP?

I can understand why anyone would feel uncomfortable reading Shodan’s posts, but he does in fact address this explicitly:

To be sure, Shodan is wrong in every post he makes, but his rightness or wrongness does not matter; only his expression of the attitude does. Your question has been answered - not merely answered but flagged, bolded, capitalized, framed in neon, and hoisted onto a statue.

If the mere existence of Shodan - who is extraordinarily representative of a large segment of political discourse - doesn’t answer your question then certainly nothing I say will make a difference.

77

OK, time to step back and do a quick review here. This all started with your claim upthread that “conservatives want government controlling certain things, liberals want government controlling everything” and you challenged liberals to “name one thing that liberals would agree is a problem that they do not want government involved in”.

You asked for just one example of something liberals don’t want government involved in, and I gave you three.

Now it appears that you don’t like my examples. Well, frankly, too bad. These are valid examples of major social issues that I and many other progressives believe the government should stay out of. You don’t have to agree. You threw out a challenge, and I answered it, with multiple examples. The end.

And I note also that your insistence that the government must be involved in these issues follows all the usual right-wing fantasies where they just simply fabricate the claim that “abortion is the ending of a human life” and insist that the government must enforce this fabrication, despite the fact that a vast segment of the population and much of the medical community vehemently disagrees with it. And it’s hard to see how right-wing opposition to gay marriage – an issue that affects them not at all if they are not gay – is nothing other than dressed-up mean-spirited homophobia, and an attempt to enlist government to participate in said mean-spirited homophobia.

And it’s really, really hard to see how anyone can possibly argue these things while also arguing, as you did in your post #40, that “to a conservative government should do government things, the military, the courts, and police, and keep its nose out of everything else.”

And finally, nowhere did I refer to the guarantee of religious rights as “lunatic fringe”, and I never even mentioned the RFRA. In fact I specifically said this – go back and read it: “[Religious rights] is a more complex issue than the first two [abortion and gay marriage], where the Republican position is just simply flat-out lunatic fringe, but I provided it as yet a third example”.

78

Yes, but again, Hobby Lobby is choosing of their own volition to pay their employees more than mandated by law. Why does the author feel compelled to remind us that these are not “bleeding-heart liberals”?

The definition of “liberal” seems mostly to exist in the imaginations of conservatives. But the definition of “conservative” doesn’t seem able to yield any predictions about future conservative policy positions, since those are demonstrably all over the map. Can’t you see how this issue can appear in this way?

Don’t get me wrong, you’re not a bad person…