Part 1: Names that no longer work

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Another national election has come and gone, and with it, another increase in name-calling and distortion. Name-calling serves those whose malignantly swelling cash injections finance it—the faceless corruptors who want government to comply with their interests.

But it doesn’t serve the electorate. It’s no substitute for clearly stated positions, reasoned argument and hard evidence.

Among the names that political actors call each other—and themselves—are “conservative,” “liberal,” and “progressive.” Yet if you ask a self-described “conservative,” “liberal,” or “progressive” what his or her self-descriptor means, you will be hard pressed to get a clear definition.

Liberalism emerged as the Age of Enlightenment’s political philosophy. It emphasized personal liberty, political equality, pluralism, tolerance, and limited government powers. Liberal philosophy is embedded in America’s Declaration of Independence, France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and the English and American Bills of Rights.

It became the philosophical rationale for England’s Glorious Revolution, the American War of Independence, and the French Revolution. Each ushered in liberal states, with free elections, civil rights, free trade, and freedoms of speech, religion, assembly and the press.

Conservatism emerged as a reaction to liberalism and its perceived excesses. Early conservatives advocated a hierarchical society and a divinely sanctioned monarch. Bowing to inevitability, after the Glorious Revolution they argued that sovereignty rested with the Crown, Lords, and Commons, rather than the people.

Reaction has been conservatism’s dynamic ever since. There is no single set of policies that can universally be called “conservative.” Instead, conservatism’s role has been to defend traditional institutions, and what is “traditional” changes with place and historical moment. For example, the sanctity of states’ rights, a guiding principle of our then-liberal 18^th Century Constitution and a cherished conservative principle in 21^st Century America, would be repudiated by English conservatives of both the 18^th and 21^st Centuries.

One can say that conservatism’s motive force has always been resistance to institutional progress. But a more positive and worthwhile way to view it is as valuing tradition, community, and family as means of maintaining social harmony, while retaining a healthy skepticism regarding the limits of human rationality and “progress.”

Modern conservatives have caught up with classical liberalism and now embrace its tenets. In fact, outside the U.S., American conservatism is viewed as liberalism, or in economics, “neo liberalism,” while American liberalism is viewed as “social liberalism.”

Modern liberals have embraced two additional and interrelated guiding principles that modern conservatives reject. The first is a recognition that equality of opportunity is meaningless if one doesn’t have bare necessities such as food, shelter, and education that are required to take advantage of opportunity.

The second is an expanded definition of “freedom.” In classic liberalism, freedom meant non-interference. The newer view understands freedom as the opportunity to fully realize one’s potential, and that achieving that requires cooperation. Modern liberals believe that the state should ensure the minimal level of human existence required to guarantee equal rights. And they believe that all individuals have a duty to promote the common good.

Modern liberalism traces its history to the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson that acted on these principles. Modern conservatism traces its history to Ronald Reagan and the backlash against the “nanny state,” which “encourages dependence.”

Progressives who know their history trace it to the reform movement that emerged in reaction to the Gilded Age of the late 19^th and early 20th Centuries when inequality was last as severe as it is becoming today. Those reformers extended the Enlightenment notion of “progress,” believing that humans can continuously improve themselves and their institutions through advancing science, economic development, and better organization.

While they believed that national government could and should aid this quest, their focus was much more on cities and states. They believed that the average citizen should have greater influence in government and that government should be more efficient. They fought municipal corruption, advocated women’s suffrage, and won states’ adoption of the initiative, referendum, and recall.

Believing that an effective citizenry is an educated one, they lobbied for universal schooling and against child labor. They introduced child-centered (progressive) education practices.

Their settlement house movement raised city dwellers’ standard of living. Campaigns against tainted food and fraudulent drugs produced the Pure Food and Drug Act, the nation’s first consumer protection legislation.

Progressives supported organized labor and opposed the power of monopolies, although differed on how to accomplish the latter. Some favored breaking up trusts to increase competition. Others saw large corporations as more efficient and called for their greater regulation.

Initially, a majority of the Progressive Movement’s political leaders were Republicans, such as Senators Robert La Follete and George William Norris, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and Supreme Court Justice Lewis Brandeis. But as the Republican Party came increasingly under the control of big business, progressives became Democrats, or followed Roosevelt into the Progressive Party. Today, the Progressive Caucus in Congress is composed entirely of Democrats.

“Progressive,” as a self-descriptor seems to have come back into vogue in the last quarter century. I think that many who chose it did so because they were liberals who were battered by conservatives’ success at turning “liberal” into an insult. Or they were socialists who were frightened by the McCarthy era’s legacy of mindless redbaiting.

When I wrote that one would be hard pressed to get a clear definition from those who self identify as “conservative,” “liberal,” or “progressive,” I didn’t mean to imply that they are ignorant or stupid. Highly intelligent and educated people whom I know cannot satisfactorily explain to me what they mean when they use these terms.

I think that there are two reasons for this. First, the real-world policies that each group advocates are inconsistent and contradictory, based more on that group’s particularistic interests than on philosophical integrity. Second, the world has changed so much that the historical assumptions of conservatism, liberalism, and progressivism can no longer accommodate reality.

I’ll explore both of these phenomena in the next column.