Delaware politicsFollow

That's the deal-breaker for me. No way I could live that far north.

That... seems remarkably correct. Alas, leaves the poor folks like me who are socially liberal but fiscally conservative with a position of picking the lesser of two evils. Le sigh.

I assume Varus is in favor of the government doing nothing and letting the tax cuts expire. I'd hate to think he's hypocritically selective!

A do-nothing congress will be unable to put such a tax system in place.

So you DO want a do-something Congress.

You're in favor of a do-nothing congress therefore you are in favor of letting the tax cuts expire. You can't have one without the other.

I don't quite agree with this, though I don't agree with Catwho's summation any more. I don't believe there's truly an underlying philosophy to either conservative or liberal thought, or if there is that it is so abstracted as to be impossible to define or attribute. I believe both tend to be more of a collection of individual view points.

The problem I see with your specific summation is that social conservatives exist. These are people who largely demand that the government prohibit or regulate many aspects of our lives.

Sure. And that's why there's always going to be variation when you get down to the specific issues and specific people. But in broad terms, it's far more accurate to say that liberals support government intervention into our lives and conservatives fight against it.



I suppose it's somewhat of a self-defining label, but to me those aren't "social conservatives". Those are "social liberals" who happen to believe in using government to impose a different set of social rules on society than what the social liberals who are in the majority of the Democratic party want. But then, I define conservative and liberal in the classical sense. A conservative opposes big government and a liberal embraces it. Thus to me, no matter what they may call themselves, someone who's proposing a law mandating that bible passages be read each day in public school (for example) would be a liberal.


The predominant liberal movement today is largely secular in nature. Thus "religious" social change is relegated in their minds to a "social conservative" position, which is the definition you're using. I don't agree with that, and I think most of the evidence for it is red herring. Conservatives defend religious beliefs when they feel those beliefs are being imposed on by government. That often gets painted as being "pro religion" as though if only they had enough power, conservatives would impose those same religious beliefs on others.

That's not the case though. The left just presents the issue as though both sides are flip sides of the same coin, each fighting for the same things just in opposite directions. Thus, if the left is fighting *against* religion in public life, the right must be fighting *for* it. That's simply not true. The left is fighting to use government to impose its view of society on the rest of us, and the right is fighting against that happening. It's a mistake to interpret this any other way.


It's a common dialectic used by the Left though. They present their positions as being "for the poor", and "for womens rights", and "for minority rights", and "for equality". I would submit that they define their positions that way specifically so they can label conservatives as "against the poor", and "against womens rights", and "against minority rights", and "against equality". It's the same false "flip sides of the coin" assumption though. The reality is that the right opposes the methods used to help the poor, and pursue womens rights, and minority rights, and equality, and whatnot.

And overwhelmingly the difference between left and right isn't the for or against positions, but the degree to which the government is used to impose a result. We're for helping the poor. We just don't agree that big government welfare programs is the way to do it. We're for womens and minority rights, we just don't agree that government imposed quotas and affirmative action and hiring incentives are the way to do that. We believe in equality, but we believe that you can't have that if government is constantly changing the rules in order to balance out the outcomes. Equality of result is not the same as equality of opportunity and conservatives believe that the later is vastly more important than the former.


I just think it's completely false to present this as though both sides are even remotely equivalent when it comes to government intervention in our lives. Completely, utterly false.

Even in degree of truth there is in that, I don't find that to be a good framing for the differences. To me, it seems to be a definition from a conservative perspective. If you were ask a conservative to define their belief system or what conservatism is about, then size of government (small) would likely be a part of that answer. However, if you were to ask a liberal to define their belief system or what liberalism is about, then they wouldn't say they believe in large government or as much government as needed. Size of government likely wouldn't even be a part of their answer. More likely you'd find them focusing on words like equality and fairness.

Each group would define itself along different dimensions. Your description of each describes the respective ideologies along a dimension that is highly relevant to conservatives but not very relevant to liberals, even though it is fairly accurate.

I can understand fiscal conservatives wanting to distance and define themselves separately from social conservatives, but I think "social liberal" is equally or even more inaccurate.

This comes back slightly to the previous mention of each group measuring themselves along different dimensions. To a fiscal or small government conservative, social conservatives rank higher in the degree of government control they desire, so fiscal and small government conservatives might seem to them as being closer to liberals. However, from a social liberal perspective, these social conservatives are extremely different, and much closer to fiscal conservatives from their dimension of measurement. To them, social conservatism ranks very low in fairness and equality.

In a more pragmatic sense, social conservatives and social liberals are mostly polar opposites to each other. There is very little they would agree on: abortion, gay marriage, separation of church and state, etc. Both would certainly object to being defined as a singular and homogeneous group.



The rest of your post frames much the differences again in terms of the size of government, and the statement I made before applies. Most modern liberals do not define or measure themselves along a dimension of how much government they support. They could go with a little or they could go with a lot. In the same way that you say "The left just presents the issue as though both sides are flip sides of the same coin, each fighting for the same things just in opposite directions. Thus, if the left is fighting *against* religion in public life, the right must be fighting *for* it. That's simply not true." You are doing the same. Because the right is for small government, the left must be against it, but that is equally false. Instead the left tends to focus on the dimension of equality and fairness.

Edited, Sep 17th 2010 9:52pm by Allegory

In less boring news, current Republican senator and primary campaign loser Lisa Murkowski has announced that she will run an independent campaign against Palin-backed Joe Miller and Democratic nominee Scott McAdams.

ZING!!

Edited, Sep 17th 2010 9:54pm by Jophiel

Classical conservatism is that change is not just bad but flat-out unnecessary.