WurfWhile

I’ve had a cold that’s knocked me out the last few days, but I wanted to share a couple of things I’ve read recently that really impressed me.

Theory

Jonathan Chait at The New Republic writes about the difference between American liberalism and conservatism (sorry subscription required). It’s really a very nice analysis, some minor quibbles I have with it aside, and it pairs nicely with George Lakoff’s theories, for those of you who have been reading his popular work. Here’s a sample from Chait:

“Imagine that God were to appear on Earth for the unlikely purpose of settling…our disputes over economic policy [and]…he announced that every empirical claim advanced by conservatives was correct. Cutting taxes produces such great economic growth that even the poor benefit. Privatizing or eliminating social programs like Medicare and Social Security will cause the elderly to save more money and enjoy higher living standards. Slashing regulations, by eliminating unintended side effects, actually does a better job helping those whom the regulations were intended to help than the regulations themselves. Suppose that God presented these conclusions so convincingly–if his stature alone did not suffice–that everybody immediately accepted them as truth.

How would liberals respond? No doubt by rethinking and abandoning nearly all their long-held positions. Liberalism, after all, claims to produce certain outcomes: more prosperity and security, especially for the poor and middle classes; a cleaner environment; safer foods and drugs; and so on. If it were proved beyond a doubt that liberal policies fail to produce those outcomes–or even, as conservatives often claim, that such policies hurt their intended beneficiaries–then their rationale would disappear. It may be hard to imagine liberals advocating capital gains tax cuts as a way to lift up the working stiff. But that’s just because there’s no evidence to show they do. If the evidence were to change, so would the liberal mindset. The point is that liberalism has no justification other than the belief that liberal policies produce beneficial outcomes.

Now imagine the opposite were to happen. God appears in order to affirm liberal precepts: Current tax levels barely affect economic incentives, social programs provide tremendous economic security at modest cost to growth, and most regulations achieve their intended effects without producing undue distortions. Would economic conservatives likewise abandon their views? Some certainly would, but a great many would not. Economic conservatism, unlike liberalism, would survive having all its empirical underpinnings knocked out from beneath it.
….
[C]onservatism, unlike liberalism, overlays a deeper set of philosophical principles. Conservatives believe that big government impinges upon freedom…for a true conservative, whatever ends they think smaller government may bring about–greater prosperity, economic mobility for the non-rich–are almost beside the point. As Milton Friedman wrote, ‘[F]reedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself.’

We’re accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people’s lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people’s lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.
….
Now, liberalism’s pragmatic superiority wouldn’t matter to a true ideological conservative any more than news about the medical benefits of pork (to pick an imaginary example) would cause a strictly observant Jew to begin eating ham sandwiches. But, if you have no particular a priori preference about the size of government and care only about tangible outcomes, then liberalism’s aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy.
….
If liberalism is not the mirror image of conservatism, what is? The more apt parallel is probably socialism. True socialists believe that allowing capitalists to keep some of the fruits of workers’ labor is inherently immoral. They also tend to believe that free enterprise does not work very well. But, like the conservative belief that big government doesn’t work well, this empirical belief merely sits atop a deeper normative belief. For committed socialists, doing away with ‘exploitation’ is an end in itself.”

Practice

The other piece that struck me comes from, of all places, The Atlantic Monthly. While I highly respect it for some of its writing (from the experience and implications of Americans using foreign born au pairs to the development and implications of the American prison industrial complex), I find its quality uneven, including its coverage of politicians and parties. The February issue has, however, a strong piece by Chuck Todd that takes a look at the difference between the Clinton and Bush legacies (sorry, subscription required). I tend to share the view of Clinton expressed, that he was not a boon to the Democratic Party, and would add to the discussion of triangulation, that Clinton is the first president in modern times, I believe, to have won two terms with less than the popular vote (he had a plurality each time). Add that to George W. Bush not winning a majority his first term, and you can see how divided our country really has been - and which party has benefited from it thus far. The piece is not beyond just criticism - but I tend to think it is in the right direction. For those Clinton fans who may disagree with the critique, it does provide food for thought. A sample:

“The modern Democratic Party looks at Clinton’s presidency as a period of unquestioned success, and its perceived lessons continue to hold tremendous sway. Foremost is the belief that the party’s path to victory, blazed by Clinton, lies in packaging liberal or centrist ideas into easily digestible bites that together constitute a core set of values - in a word, Clintonism. At its best this approach allowed Clinton to disassociate himself (and, by extension, his party) from many of the unpopular liberal policies of the past, steering a course between traditional liberal and conservative positions with bold and often controversial plans for highly charged issues such as race, welfare reform, and free trade, and in the process managing to neutralize many of the old criticisms. At first, as with all that is new in politics, those accustomed to the old way of doing things treated these ideas as if they were radioactive. Clinton eventually proved them wrong. But political ideas have a half-life.

It is hard to overstate the reverence in which Clinton is held by professional Democratic operatives, many of whom served in his administration and today constitute the party’s major powers. This group has hewed faithfully to the tenets of Clintonism, staunch in its belief that Democratic candidates can neutralize troublesome issues simply by triangulating, as Clinton did, and prevail with a list of issues nearly identical to the one Clinton touted. But as Al Gore, John Kerry, and countless lesser Democrats have tried this approach and failed, one thing has become clearer and clearer: the success of Clintonism was due primarily to the period in which Clinton governed and to his remarkable political skills - not to the electoral strategy he bequeathed to his party.

The latter has proved disastrous.”