Is Nox Nova a liberal blog? Henry asked this question a while back in a very nice video post. Of course, I am called “liberal” constantly, both by contributors to this blog, and by others, in and out of the comments box. I have to admit, this is one thing that really annoys me, mainly because it never goes away. People use that label thoughtlessly and carelessly, giving implicit endorsement to the false distinctions that underpin American politics.
Very briefly, a “liberal” is a person influenced by an Enlightenment-era anthropology predicated on the notion of individual liberty as the foundation of society. Society is reduced to a mere social contract between individuals and private liberty always supplants the common good. Instead of being based on God’s will, morality is now based on self-interest. As someone once said, a person’s rights ended only where another person’s nose began! Thus “free” market exchange is virtuous, without regard for any resulting injustice or inequality. The only form of permissible government becomes “liberal” democracy, as other custom-based systems of governance are not sufficiently underpinned by individual self-determination and do not provide the architecture needed for the necessary social contract. A woman has the “right” to do as she wishes with her own body, with no regard for another living person growing inside her, because, after all, in a society based on social contracts, the unborn are not really in a position to negotiate. And marriage becomes about the fulfilment of individual wants and desires, and not about the bearing and rearing of children. What I am trying to do with these examples is obvious. Deep down, there is little difference between the ideology on the right and the left of US politics, as they accept the same philosophical foundation.
If you are even slightly familiar with my posts, you will be aware that I do not support these positions. I accept the free market (especially against the statist alternative), but insist that it must be subservient to the common good, and recognize the right of the authorities to intervene along these lines. In economics, I am a proud corporatist in a era when that term is most definitely out of fashion. I have much affinity for old-style European Christian Democracy. I have very little respect for the modern nation state, and am a big fan of both autonomous local communities and broad supranational institutions like the United Nations and the European Union. I think nationalism is a source of great evil. I find the zeal to impose “liberal democracy” on all countries to be an exercise in political utopianism on the scale of Marxism. So, call me what you like, but bear in mind that Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi probably view the world somewhat differently.
Back to the point in question: I see that my favorable attitude toward Obama has promoted a lot of criticism lately. I believe one other Vox Novacontributor supports Obama. Others have said favorable things about Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, John McCain, and Ron Paul (these are what come to mind, there may be more). And yet, when contributors nod toward Republicans, this does not warrant a mention. When a small number say nice things about a Democrat, however, all hell breaks loose. As I’ve said many times, I’m happy to debate the issues until the cows come home. And I have absolutely no problem with Catholics opting for Republicans based on the abortion issue. I do, however, have a major problem with people who think that all good Catholics should either abstain or perform obeisance toward the Republican party. And we seem to be seeing a lot of that around here these days.
Often the use of “liberal” is thoughtless and careless; in some instances though it is deliberately meant as a buzzword for bad politics. “Conservative” is used in the same way, albeit by a different circle. I suppose such uses are kinda thoughtless and careless.
Like it or not, the word “liberal” means something very different in the United States than it does in other parts of the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_American_liberalism#American_versus_European_use_of_the_term_.22liberalism.22
I’m happy not to call you a liberal since I know you dislike the label. But I’m just one guy, and unless and until you go door to door explaining to everyone in the country the “true” meaning of the term, getting called a liberal is probably something you’re going to have to learn to live with. Likewise, if you use “liberal” as you do in this post in political discussions and don’t add some sort of qualifier (such as “classically”) to make your meaning clear, you are going to be misunderstood and cause confusion.
Let’s face it, Republicans just have sharper elbows (if not minds), are more adept at manipulation and coining “insults” such as “liberal” which is incredibly lame at this point. When it comes to Catholic blogs this one is quite unusual insofar as tolerating opinions (such as yours) that don’t march in lockstep with conservative Republicanism. I’m not manipulated by the flame throwers. They’ve had a good ride in recent years and will certainly not go quietly but they’ve used up their line of credit.
What do you mean when you say “old-style European Christian Democracy”?
Can you expand on this term and maybe give a concrete example?
Thanks!
JCHall:
Have you ever read the Daily Kos or the Huffington Post?
Please.
“I have to admit, this is one thing that really annoys me, mainly because it never goes away. ”
First step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Time to get in touch with your *higher power*:)
MM,
Didn’t you compare Mike Huckabee to a totalitarian East German Dictator a while back?
Obama has just been called a pro-abort. He has not been compared to a dictator.
Blackadder– you see, I disagree with that. I think it’s current American usage is fundamentally inconsistent, and used as a catchall attack label.
Ben: is all nuance lost on you? I did not compare McCain (not Huckabee, by the way) to Honecker as a human being; I merely noted the silliness of the 100 year comment in each case. The deluded granduer that lay behind Honecker’s defense of the wall is echoed in the same deluded grandeur as those who currently defend the occupation of Iraq. That comparison is apt.
Sorry, looking through the record I see that you called Huckabee the least objectiobable republican candidate.
The point is that you have often been very critical of republicans, and point out how they are inconsistently pro-life. I don’t think Alexham is doing anything all that different. It needs to be said that Obama was against the born alive protection act in the Illinois legislature.
I do find much to admire in Huckabee. It would nice to have a candidate with Obama’s ability to inspire and unite, Clinton’s healthcare plan, Edwards’ approach to the poverty and corporate interests, Huckabee’s views on abortion, and Ron Paul’s approach to Iraq!
Spoken like a true liberal… Oops, I guess I shouldn’t have said that! :-)
(in all fun of course…..)
Interesting viewpoint though. I’ll take it into consideration when participating in your posts. I know one area we’ll disagree is that the “common good” isn’t always so “common”, or so “good”.
I lean toward personal freedom tightly coupled with personal responsibility. I fail to see where Jesus’ teaching says we need to use the .gov to achieve the “common good” or to reward those who do not wish to better themselves.
I’ll also admit – I use the term liberal in a derogatory manner, typically meaning someone who wishes to use the state, redistribute wealth to those who didn’t earn it, and who want to infringe on rights I believe are God given.
I seem to recall someone recently who was insisting on his right to use the label “Calvinist” idiosyncratically to describe people who are not “Calvinist” in the traditional sense. I wish I could remember who that was . . .
I’ll just throw in my hat and agree with your statement that Vox Nova is liberal. You can Noam Chomsky to death what the definition is, but the mere fact that you are splitting hairs is a dead-giveaway that you’re a liberal. I mean that as a fact, not as a pejorative.
The fact is, there are a lot of faithful Catholics who, having looked at the writing of the popes and the USCCB and examined their consciences, believe strongly that voting for a party which holds the positions that the Democratic Party does on abortion and a number of other issues is gravely wrong. You, apparently, have reached different conclusions, and goodness knows you air that fact strongly and frequently. You ought not be surprised that this. Even while picking your own course, you should hardly be surprised that when issues like abortion, marriage, cloning and euthenasia are on the table, people work up a certain sense or moral fervor.
Unless, of course, people get to the point of thinking, “Oh, there’s MM off on his quixotic course again” and just don’t bother commenting at all. I keep promising myself I’ll do this, but the will is weak at times…
MM, I think we agree on many things. But here are two questions/observations:
1. Don’t you think you are being a bit hard on the nation state? There are certainly diseased forms of nationalism, but there are also diseased forms of tribalism, regionalism, and internationalism. The nation-state, when logically and justly constituted, is the best defense against these other dysfunctional entities.
2. Since (like me) you are an old-style corporatist/Christian Democrat, don’t you think it is time this profile had a more explicit presence in American politics? As you mentioned, the DP and the GOP are ideologically incompatible with a CD outlook. So why remain submerged in the soup of left/right liberalism?
[...] and Christianity Yesterday, I argued that the American political system is underpinned by liberalism, rightly understood, and that [...]
This strikes me as a totally off-the-wall description of liberalism. I’ll take the proposed description point by point.
1. Very briefly, a “liberal” is a person influenced by an Enlightenment-era anthropology predicated on the notion of individual liberty as the foundation of society.
The problem here is with the term “society.” Liberals certainly believe that protecting individual liberty is an important function of the state. But liberalism does not imply that individual liberty is “the foundation of society” – whatever that means. Liberalism is not a theory about society at all, it is a theory about the state. All sorts of “non-liberal” views about social institutions such as the family, the Church, the nation, etc., are compatible with a liberal view of the state.
2. Society is reduced to a mere social contract between individuals and private liberty always supplants the common good.
Liberalism is not about atomizing sociaty. Rather, liberalism is about making social cooperation possible under conditions of religious and moral pluralism. By limiting the function of the state to defining and enforcing fair rules of social cooperation liberalism makes possible social cooperation amongst people with different ideas about religion and morality. Furthermore, the institutions that make for peaceful social cooperation under conditions of religious and moral pluralism are themselves social goods, and creating and sustaining those institutions will frequently require placing the “common good” ahead of private interests.
3. Instead of being based on God’s will, morality is now based on self-interest.
Liberalism is a political theory, and it entails no particular theory about moral obligation generally. For example, the philosopher John Rawls always made it clear that just because he espoused a social contract theory of political obligation that did not mean that he suported a social contract theory of moral obligation generally.
4. As someone once said, a person’s rights ended only where another person’s nose began! Thus “free” market exchange is virtuous, without regard for any resulting injustice or inequality.
This is at best a fair desciption of only one type of liberalism – libertarianism. Libertarianism is not a particularly persuasive version of liberalism, nor is it widely supported by liberals. The vast majority of liberals support regulating the market, redustribution of income and wealth, and the social provision of certain goods. Even so-called classical liberals generally support the establishment of some sort of social minimum which it is the government’s obligation to guarantee to all citizens.
Liberalism and market economics don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. There is such a thing as a liberal socialist, and there are plenty of non-liberal arguments in favor of markets.
5. The only form of permissible government becomes “liberal” democracy, as other custom-based systems of governance are not sufficiently underpinned by individual self-determination and do not provide the architecture needed for the necessary social contract.
Are you in favor of one of these “other custom-based systems of government”? It’s a free counrty, so you certainly have the right to advocate for the return to the monarchy or an anarchist revolution or whatever. But if you are going to say that you reject liberal democracy, then I do think that you owe your readers some account of what you would put in its place.
6. A woman has the “right” to do as she wishes with her own body, with no regard for another living person growing inside her, because, after all, in a society based on social contracts, the unborn are not really in a position to negotiate. And marriage becomes about the fulfilment of individual wants and desires, and not about the bearing and rearing of children. What I am trying to do with these examples is obvious.
There is no necessary connection between liberalism and abortion. There are pro-life liberals just as there are pro-abortion liberals. I’ve never heard anyone – liberal or otherwise – say that abortion is just because fetuses can’t negotiate. That’s bizarre.
7. Deep down, there is little difference between the ideology on the right and the left of US politics, as they accept the same philosophical foundation.
I agree with this. Both the right and the left in the U.S. accept liberalism as the framework for thinking about the role of the state. One side focuses more on liberty and opposition to the state, the other more on equality and the need for government intervention to ensure the fair value of liberty. But everyone – whether they call themselves a “liberal” or a “conservative” – accepts liberalism as the basic framework for debate.
Historically the Church viewed liberalism more or less the way you do: as anathema to everything that the Church believes. But in the 20th century a generation of Catholics worked very hard to overcome the Church’s hostility to democracy, human rights, religious freedom, etc. People like John Courtney Murray, Jaques Maritain, Yves Simon, and many others, articulated a specifically Catholic basis for liberal politics. They wanted to show that liberal democracy and the Church were complementary to each other. Church teaching, far from being antithetical to liberal democracy, provided liberal democracy with its surest and best theoretical foundation.
These days a lot of left-leaning Catholics seem to have a different approach. Under the influence of Alasdair MacIntyre or Stanley Hauerwas or whomever, they seem to have retreated back into the older posture of denunciation that characterized the Church’s attitude towards liberal democracy before Vatican II. They lay the blame for such problems as support for abortion as a right, insufficient support for the poor, etc, on liberalism.
For myself, I support liberalism. I don’t think that there is anything particularly liberal about support for abortion rights or indifference to the poor. Indeed, I think that those problems are a betrayal of liberalism.
Two more points. The following two sentences seem to contradict each other since the modern welfare state is very much a project of European Christian Democracy:
“I have much affinity for old-style European Christian Democracy. I have very little respect for the modern nation state, . . . .”
I support Obama too. But the reason that I do is that I think that there are sufficient reasons to do so despite his support for abortion. I’m not sure how the argument you present in this post provides any basis for supporting Obama, however. Assuming everything you say in your post is correct, how does the “liberalism” of the Republicans provide a sufficient reason for voting for Obama? It seems to me that the argument has to deal with the abortion issue more concretely.
Christopher: you raise some good points. I used to be firmly on the side of Murray, but I find myself shifting more toward the position of Anscombe and MacIntyre on these issues. Despite the differences you point out, I think all of liberalism is underpinned by the social contract model of the state, and by the belief that positive law trumps the divine law.