EDMUND BURKEAfter reading the post immediately below (“Fighting for the Conservative Banner”), my friend Mike Dorf – a distinguished constitutional law scholar at Cornell Law School who runs the blog Dorf on Law – asked whether there are likely to be realignments across the liberal-conservative divide. Specifically, he asked whether I thought alliances might develop between (1) right-wing libertarians and left-wing civil libertarians, or (2) right-wing populist religious conservatives and left-wing redistributionists. I respond to Mike’s questions in this post.
I do not believe that history is the inevitable result of structural forces. Individuals determine the trajectory of history. America would not be the same today if, for example, James Madison had not attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787, or Franklin D. Roosevelt had not been elected president in 1932. World War II may have turned out differently if Winston Churchill had been killed in a freak automobile accident in, say, 1925. Others would not have necessarily have promoted the same ideas or taken the same actions. In Buckley, I argue that conservatism would not be what it is today without William F. Buckley, Jr. Who shows up to advocate a particular idea at a particular time – and has the skill, resources, or sheer luck to make an impact – is unpredictable. (People determine history only to an extent, of course. An asteroid can wipe us all out. But the point remains that much of history is chance.) Futurology is bunk.
That having been said, we can make better guesses about what won’t happen than what will. Recognizing that even this is treacherous, I address Mike’s questions.
I doubt that there will be significant realignments across the left-right divide, at least in the foreseeable future. Here’s why: Something fundamental separates liberals and conservatives.
The political philosopher Isaiah Berlin said that conservatives and liberals have fundamentally different visions about liberty. Conservatives, said Berlin, subscribe to the negative vision of liberty. They see liberty as being free from coercion, especially governmental coercion. That’s why conservatives tend to favor weak government. By contrast, liberals embrace what Berlin called the positive vision of liberty, which holds that real liberty entails a reasonable opportunity to pursue happiness. In modern society, that means having at least minimum levels of certain things, such as education, nutrition, health care, and wholesome communities. Liberals think a strong government is necessary to guarantee liberty. See “Two Concepts of Liberty” in Isaiah Berlin, Liberty (Henry Hardy ed. 2002).
Cognitive linguist George Lakoff says that conservatives and liberals unconsciously derive their political views from different visions of successful families. Conservatives, he argues, favor an authoritarian-father model while liberals favor a nurturing-mother model. This leads liberals to believe government should help people, while conservatives believe that government should insist that people play by the rules, be self-reliant, and sink or swim on their own. Government’s role is to punish people who break the rules. Lakoff explains his theory in his book Moral Politics (1996).
As one can see, Berlin and Lakoff are saying something similar, though from different perspectives. While I don’t think either one has the entire answer about what separates left and right, they are both help us understand what divides conservatives and liberals. Also worth reading are The Political Brain by liberal psychologist Drew Westen, and Conflict of Visions by conservative economist Thomas Sowell. For present purposes, suffice it to say they agree that there are fundamental differences between left and right. This does not mean that all conservatives are the same and all liberals the same. That is by no means true (as the last post discusses). Nevertheless, what separates left and right is deeply-felt. The boundary is not easily crossed.
Right-wing libertarians and left-wing civil libertarians have much in common. Ayn Rand Objectivists and card-carrying ACLU members may both believe in robust interpretations of rights. Both may dislike the Patriot Act or favor legalization of marijuana. Both may (or may not) advocate an isolationist foreign policy, as does Ron Paul. Yet, what separates conservative and liberal libertarians is more important than what unites them. The conservative libertarian wants government to protect citizens from foreign invaders and domestic criminals, maintain a court system to adjudicate disputes – and do precious little else. Although it may have nothing to do with the ACLU’s agenda, the liberal ACLU member is a liberal because he believes that government should do many other things – maintain not only a police department, a court system, and armed forces, but a fire department; public schools and universities; a Head Start program; a food stamp program; midnight basketball programs in the inner cities; food stamp programs; perhaps a universal health care system; and certainly agencies regulating food and drug safety, auto safety, workplace safety, environmental safety, and the like. The liberal, moreover, wants to pay for these things through a progressive tax system – which is anathema to the right-wing libertarian. This divide is psychologically more important than commonalities about rights.
Mike’s question about populist religious conservatives (he offers Hike Huckabee as an example) and redistributionist liberals (let’s call them Robin Hood liberals) is more difficult. In part, that’s because religious conservatives are diverse, probably more diverse than is generally understood. I gather from Mike’s question that what he thinks unites the two groups is the feeling that we should not live in a system where the rich get richer and everyone else loses ground. Both groups may be repulsed by executives who make hundreds – even thousands – of times as much as the lowest-paid workers in their firms.
It may be possible for some religious conservatives to be tugged left because of particular issues. Some, for example, may believe that because God made us the stewards of the earth, we have an obligation to control pollution and fight global warming. After committing to the environmental cause, they may begin to feel they have less in common with other conservatives and more in common with liberals. That might result in their drifting left on other issues too.
But I doubt this will happen in significant numbers. Religious conservatives will cling – no, not to their religion and their guns – but to the other deep-seated things that cause them to self-identify as religious conservatives. Populist conservatives and populist liberals have things in common, but their differences run deeper.
A final (and only partially related) comment about “redistributionists.” I don’t think there are many Americans who so classify themselves. Liberals believe in progressive taxation and collective-bargaining rights, to be sure, but they do not think of themselves wanting to redistribute wealth. Just the opposite: they see themselves and wanting to stop a redistribution of wealth from the middle to the upper class that is now underway. They don’t fancy themselves Robin Hoods taking from the rich to give to the poor. They see themselves more as wanting to stop dukes, duchesses, and earls from sending the Sherriff of Nottingham to pillage the villages to enrich themselves. Only right-wingers characterize liberals as “redistributionists,” “levelers,” and “socialists.” Liberals see themselves as wishing to promote fairness by having everyone pay his and her fair share of government services.