Liberals vs. Liberals
November 2, 2011
Could it be that I am a (gasp!) conservative?
John Médaille seems to think so.
I suppose anyone whose retirement plan amounts to kids and land (for rabbits – apparently they’re very efficient at converting plant matter into protein!) isn’t going to be able to run from the label forever.
Advertisement
Like this:
One blogger likes this post.
2 Comments
Comments are closed.
But here is the issue: If you would like to be able to go off and live on land with lots of children and rabbits (an approach which has a lot of appeal to me as well) a degree of classical liberalism is the only thing that will allow you to do that — unless you think it likely that society as a whole will reach a consensus that everyone must go off and live on land with children and rabbits. (Something which, given our current society, seems unlikely.)
I think that Madelaine is right that the American conservatism of classical liberalism does differ from a more antique continental conservatism in that it sheds a lot of the more authoritarian elements of an older conservatism. (Though this also has to do with the different experiences of Europeans in Europe and descendants of Europeans living in America — much of the early American experience and psyche was shaped by the benign neglect of the 1600s and 1700s.) However, classical liberalism is also the means by which we can negotiate a diverse society — diverse in belief and desire. The genius of market capitalism and of classical liberalism is that they provide means (economic and political) for working around the fact that there is fundamental disagreement among many in society about what “the good” (individual or common) is.
Madelaine seems to yearn for a “system” that would enforce what he believes is a just conception of the common good and of the right ends of personal and economic activity. This would all be very well and good if everyone in society shared his ideas. Howeve, since they don’t, the idea of an authoritarian rather than a liberal approach to these things would necessitate a high stakes struggle to control the “system” — something in which I imagine all would suffer and few would get what they want.
What he seems not to grasp is the liberalism is not a system of principled license, but rather one which admits doubt and lack of consensus.
As I tried in a clunky way to say in the comments section of an earlier post, the utility of terms like “liberal” and “conservative” is practically non-existent, except in the very narrow sense of general support for the policies of one or the other of the two dominant American political parties. If you support private property and free markets but oppose global finance capitalism, the corporate state, and corporate legal personhood, are you conservative or liberal? If you oppose legal abortion but think there’s a case to be made for permitting same-sex civil marriage, are you liberal or conservative? If you admire Wendell Berry, Dorothy Day, E.F. Schumacher AND Russell Kirk, Chesterton, and Edmund Burke, are you liberal or conservative? If you are a Catholic struggling to be faithful to the letter and the spirit of Church teaching on human life and sexuality, social justice, economics, and war, are you liberal or conservative?
My view is that you are not and cannot be either. You are a Catholic. Period.