Liberals, Progressives, The Left, The Right And The War On Terror - PART I

Authors Note: This will be a multi part series spread over a week or two. Feel free to comment on each section or reserve your comments till the final product. Each part will contain a link to previous parts if you wish to refresh your memory before continuing on.

Sometimes, usually in the wee hours of the morning if I've not gone to bed, or perhaps at "Oh-Dark-Thirty" if I've woken up early I'll pop over to the internet news and read some of my favorite blogs, even before my last cup of decaf if a latenight or my first cup of joe if early awake. And sometimes, I read things like "repugs," "Bushitler" "Moonbats," "wingnut" and I get weary all over again. At other times I read some really far out comments from a (left or right) wingnut and I laugh out loud at the sheer stupidity of the comment.

Folk who would never think to cuss in their homes think nothing of using four letter words in a comment. Folk who are, in their day to day lives thoughtful, introspective, kind, generous etc., become those "repugs" or "demo-RATS on the internet and I wonder what it is that brings out such calumny and vituperation.

The right blames it on the left, the left blames it on the right, the "middle" blames both and no one really is much interested in discourse or even being rational. How silly.

Now, having said all of the above, I'm going to try to set out in a rational manner my thoughts on Liberals, Progressives, The Left and the War On Terror. "Wait Roper, you are a conservative, you don't know anything about the left, how the heck can you possibly say anything without it being some kind of repug rant?"

Good question, and I'm going to try really hard not to rant, but to give a perspective of a thinking conservative. I think then, that after you've read my little essay and you wish to comment, please feel free to do so, but do so thoughtfully without any vituperation, calumny, ad hominem attacks or cursing. Especially no cursing.

Let's begin with a few definitions shall we? (NOTE: All definitions are taken from The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics, Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition; 2003.) First, liberal.

"In general, the belief that it is the aim of politics to preserve individual rights and to maximize freedom of choice. In common with "socialism" and "conservatism," it emerged from the conjnction of the "Enlightenment, the industrial revolution and the political revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. Liberalism retains a faith in the possibiliteies of improvement in present social conditions, which is related to the idea of progress..."

The term is used most often by the right as a slur; someone who is just to the right of Joseph Stalin perhaps, or worse, an out and out "stalinist," but this is a "new" definition of "liberal" one used to castigate "tax and spend" Democrats in the middle of the 20th century through the elections, at least, of 1988 when Dukakis was running.

The term Progressive is defined as:

"An amorphous, cross-party tendency towards economic and political reform prevalent in the United States especially from 1896 to 1916.

it is difficult to place progressives on a conventional left-right spectrum. Whilst they were committed to reform they were also, in a sense, deeply conservative. They harked back to an alleged golden agae in American history - one of small farms, small towns, and small businesses where ther was opportunity for all and where self-government was a reality."

Today, too often, a person adopts the them progressive, as in "I'm a Progressive," because the right was so successful in casting the term liberal as a putdown and the modern "progressive" doesn't want to be tarred with the "liberal" lable but they still want to uphold what they consider to be modern liberal cant.

Leftist is a little harder to pin down:

"In political terms, now indicative of the radical or progressive socialist spectrum, but originally literally a spatial term.

What it is to be 'left(-wing)' varies so much over space or time that a definition is very difficult, but the following issue oreintations would normally be involved: egalitarianism, support for the (organized) working class, support for nationalization of industry, hostility to marks of hierarchy, opposition to nationalistic foreign or defence policy. 'Left' is used to distinguish positions within parties as well as among them. A left wing socialist is one who takes extreme positions on (some of) the items on the list.

When folk speak of the "hard left" this is what they are thinking of. Not necessarily "within parties" as much as a dividing line between Liberal Democrats and Democrats in left field so to speak. Of couse, this asks a question: Are there liberal Republicans and is there a "left-wing" of the Republican Party. The answer is of course, both parties are relatively "big tents" although certain political beliefs will get you disdained in both parties. Pro-Life Democrats for example, McCain-Finegold supporters in the Republicans.

Middle of the road or "moderates" really aren't anything. They have few or no core values, waffle on many if not most issues, are used by the "opposite party" as an example to hold up to the more committed members of the opposition and are generally talked about in fairly glowing terms, but are fairly despised by both ends of the political spectrum.

Conservatives are equally hard to pin down as a political force. There is the favored picture of the conservative by the far left as (in one of my favorite phrases) "Knuckle Dragging Neanderthals" or the somewhat less acceptable "Wingnut" and a few others. Conservatives may have some libertarian leanings but are not libertarians. Libertarians are not conservatives by any stretch. Conservativism is then:

"In general terms a political philosophy which aspires to the preservation of what is thought to be the best in established society, and opposes radical change.

Mannheim*, faced with the considerable differences between Continental and English traditions of conservatism, concluded that the drive behind conservatism was a 'universal psychic inclination' towards traditionalism, the doctrinal form that expressed this inclination differeing between contexts. But he does detect a common negative strand to all conservatism, a critical response to 'natural law thinking'. Conservative ideas are, thus, more genuine and profound than many critics suggest..."

* Mannheim, Karl (1893-1947) hungarian sociologist.

PART II will begin an examination of the interactions between left, right and the War on Terror

Posted by GM Roper at June 4, 2005 09:25 PM | TrackBack