In Defense of Liberalism
The lack of awareness of political history and understanding of the political process in this community makes it easy for self-serving political machines to garner votes by blaming liberals for everything from the breakdown of the traditional family to the ban on prayer in public schools. According to conservatives, liberals want government to take over our lives by dictating where and how we worship, by taking most of the money we earn from our labor and by placing rules on how we spend our money. Understanding the history of liberalism and its accomplishments, the intelligent reader will see liberalism is not a political approach that opposes freedom, responsibility and the ethics commonly ascribed to western European Judeo-Christianity. It is the source of America’s greatest strengths and victories, founded on those very values that conservatives claim as their own.
Liberalism has three faces: a political tradition, a political philosophy, and a general philosophical theory. I’m concerned here with liberalism as a political tradition and philosophy. The concept of freedom forms the historical basis of liberal theory. Liberalism’s ultimate goals are individual freedom and a government that serves all people equally.
Conservatives have generated many myths about the nature of liberalism, contrary to history and fact. For example, liberalism is not socialism. Socialism is a system of social organization in which property and the distribution of income are subject to social control rather than individual determination or market forces. Socialism intends society to be organized “from each according to his ability, to each according to his deeds.” Liberalism shares a goal with socialism, the elimination of human suffering and need, but believes this can only be achieved through the exercise of individual freedom, not through government-imposed control of the economy.
Similarly, liberalism is not communism. Communism is a further development of socialism in which society is organized “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Communism is a system of political and economic organization in which property is owned by the state or community and all citizens share in the common wealth, more or less according to their need.
Liberalism is not collectivism. The theory of collectivism holds that man is not an end to himself, but is only a tool to serve the ends of others. Collectivism, unlike individualism, holds the group as the primary and the standard of moral value. Whether that group is a dictator’s gang, the nation, society, the race, (the) god(s), the majority, the community, the tribe, etc., is irrelevant – the point is that man in principle is a sacrificial victim, whose only value is his ability to sacrifice his happiness for the will of the “group.” In contrast, liberalism places the basis for all civil society on the freedom of the individual person.
Finally, liberalism is not statism. Statism means a strong central government. Every political group advocates this position. After all, the central government of the United States, the federal government, controls the military, foreign relations and the enforcement and interpretation of the Constitution. Despite conservative claims, liberals favor effective government, not bigger government per se. Liberalism is not big government. A liberal is someone who is in favor of or open to progress and change, a person tolerant of differences and a person open to new ideas and approaches. A liberal person is therefore effectively adaptive to the ever-changing conditions of the world.
Liberalism was born in England and its early theorists centered on religious tolerance, government by consent and personal and economic freedom. All people are born free and any limitations to that normative freedom should be suspect. According to its earliest theorists, the heart of liberty is the absence of coercion by others, thus government by consent. One of liberalism’s major flaws is its occasional over-reliance on rationalistic approaches to human behavior. At times, liberalism has failed to account for the deeper and nobler of human aspirations: art, religion, love, altruism, for example. Liberalism tends to make every individual a representative of some group. Each black man is every black man. Each consumer is every consumer. Each gay man is every gay man. For example, today’s affirmative action treats all people of color as victims of historic discrimination, regardless of personal history, economic background, or ethnic identity.
The birth of liberalism as a political philosophy served as the foundation for this great experiment in capitalistic republicanism, the United States of America. The sanctity of individual freedom serves as the basis for the freedoms protected in the Bill of Rights. American liberalism is known for its particular emphasis on individuality as opposed to community. Many American political leaders have governed according to fundamentally liberal principles, including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, and John Kennedy.
Because of the American drive towards individualism and the specialization of function, liberalism has taken on a less united front than that of the conservative movement. One need look no further than the protestors at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles to see the diversity of faces in the liberal camp. Liberalism’s most popular political offspring are the identity-based movements (African-American, Latinos, Asian-Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender, feminist, etc.), the labor movements, and environmental movements. These seemingly different groups share the common goal of inclusion in the American democratic process, a concern that has been historically absent from conservative politics.
President Kennedy understood liberalism as President Kennedy understood liberalism as “an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man’s ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.” The liberals of today believe that government is or can be an efficient and effective means of ensuring social, political, and economic justice.
Liberalism has made possible many great accomplishments and achievements that transcend national and political boundaries. One legacy is our current system of interstate highways. Imagine traveling across the country with no major roadways. The GI Bill is another liberal success, opening the doors to higher education to millions who otherwise would not have had the opportunity. Perhaps your own grandparents or parents enjoyed the benefits of this program. Europe was rebuilt by American dollars under the Marshall Plan and the world has thrived in the latter of the twentieth century because of this liberal design.
A much-maligned branch of liberal thought extends to environmental protection. Liberalism recognizes that for human beings to maintain their own freedom, they must be free from the hazards of modern industrial pollutants and the myriad other threats to ecological health. Food safety laws also protect all citizens from unsafe food products. Liberalism has also been responsible for work safety laws, social security, the space program, the Peace Corps, the civil rights movements of all colors, women’s suffrage, the internet, universal public education, public health, product labeling, public universities, bank deposit insurance, Centers for Disease Control, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
We’ve all heard what conservatives have to say about liberals, but what liberals have to say for themselves? The Democratic Party has been historically identified with liberal approaches to political problems, but not all liberals are Democrats and not all Democrats are liberal. Indeed, more and more Democrats now adhere to the principles of neoliberalism and globalization which subject individual freedom to market forces. Today’s proponents of liberal political philosophy argue that government should be used as a positive force to promote individual rights and ensure social equality. Most of today’s liberals are not identified so much by their political affiliations, but by their activism in numerous social organizations, such as the People for the American Way, Green Peace, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
One of the most popular and least understood political philosophies currently in fashion, especially in Kern County, is conservatism. Conservative thinkers value tradition as a means of wisdom and often respect the proven solutions of tradition over theory. The conservative movement is often identified with cultural warfare, the fight for the dominance of cultural values. Conservative theory rejects the notion of individual liberty as the final authority, recognizing that individuals can not or do not always make the best decisions for the whole of society. Conservatives recognize, as many liberals and socialists do not, the darker side of human nature. Despite the originality and iconoclasm of his psychoanalytic theory, Freud was essentially conservative in his beliefs in the civilizing nature of human institutions such as religion and government. Conservatism defines man as a social animal whose social interactions require social intervention by government.
Where conservatives would preemptively strike against the potential anarchy inherent in individual freedom through government control, liberals demand that every restriction on human freedom be argued and its necessity proven. Because of conservatives’ dependence on the power and value of tradition and authority, they tend to fall easily under the sway of popular political figures who invoke traditional and moral authority. Conservatives, both Republican and Democatic, today tend to be passive participants in the democratic process, voting the party line without comment. This makes for dangerous politics. Liberals have always relied on their own knowledge, experience, and values in making political decisions. Liberals take an active role in the issues that affect their lives and often disagree on important “liberal” issues because no individual person has all the answers. Liberals can be trusted more than conservatives to have thought about, to have asked questions about, and to have come to a reasonable conclusion about political issues.
Politics is all about the wielding of power. The irony of conservatism is the grand faÃ?§ade that Republicans hold up as their own tenets – individual freedom, less restrictive government, equal opportunity for everyone – is actually the offspring of two centuries of liberal experimentation. At its worst, liberalism is anarchy, a return to the state of nature and the war of all against all. At its finest, liberalism is a means of alleviating human suffering, the search for methods of achieving maximum freedom with maximum respect for the rights of others.
Over the course of the Cold War, as the ideology of capitalism met head on with the ideology of communism, the contradictory nature of our postmodern condition as manifest in the nature and methods of the media has made an honest discussion of politics more and more difficult. Republicans who once waged war for states’ rights now challenge a state decision on the presidential elections in federal court or attack a state’s decision to use marijuana as a medical treatment in opposition to obsolete federal prohibitions. Liberals who once fought for the supremacy of individual freedom by removing racial barriers to education now grant far-reaching powers to multinational corporations in the name of free markets. As we are bombarded by political campaign advertising during this and in future campaigns, listen closely to the language used. You are sure to hear frequent use of the word “liberal” by some candidates, mostly Republicans, but some Democrats employ the same rhetoric. Listen closely to the context of the use of the word. Undoubtedly, the candidates will embrace the ideals of American liberal philosophy while simultaneously denying the name itself.
