Ann Salisbury sends me a link to a list of questions by Dennis Prager designed to help you decide if you’re a liberal or not. The questions are definitely of the “Have you stopped beating your wife?” class; a few examples:
1. Standards for admissions to universities, fire departments, etc. should be lowered for people of color.
8. It is good that trial lawyers and teachers unions are the two biggest contributors to the Democratic Party.
9. Marriage should be redefined from male-female to any two people.
…you get the flavor.
My first response on reading it was to suggest a mirror-image ‘conservative’ test, equally BS-laden, that involved ‘maintaining Jim Crow, supporting corporate looting, pollution‘, etc. but that seemed cheap even for me.
And it occurred to me at Brian Linse’s party – when Howard Owens busted me yet again for agreeing with him on so damn many issues – that I ought to set out some foundational issues that I believe define me as a liberal.It’s actually pretty easy.
If you like the clean(er) air and water in our urban areas, thank a liberal.
If you like the idea that Condi Rice is the NSC advisor rather than an instructor at a segregated secretarial school, thank a liberal.
If you like the Internet, thank a liberal (DARPANet was created in no small part thanks to a government research grant).
If someone you know or love survived an auto accident recently, thank a liberal. (Seat belts, safety glass, crush zones, air bags – yes, I know that air bags and seat belts have killed some people, but all the stats I’ve seen are pretty suggestive that they have saved far more than they have killed – etc. etc.)
If you were able to own your own house without paying down 30% to get a 5-year mortgage, thank a liberal (30-year mortgages were a FDR innovation).
If you worked an industrial job for thirty years without being disabled, thank a liberal.
I certainly don’t believe that all regulation is good, that forms of regulation that were designed fifty years ago are the best we can do today, or necessarily that being pro-relgulation is necessarily what defines a liberal (conservatives seem to have no quams trying to regulate what we do in our bedrooms and what we can watch, read, and listen to). But there are some clear benefits to the ‘liberal regime’ and while we do need to change the bathwater, I’d like to keep the baby, if that’s OK with you.
There are probably some more…I’d love to get some suggestions. Maybe I can try and come up with something useful on this…
A.L.,
I hate these sorts of discussions, because they generally get nowhere, but I can’t help but take issue with you here.
Many modern day self-identified liberals DO support lower standards for certain positions based on race.
Many modern day self-identified liberals DO support making marriage a free-for-all.
(I skipped the trial-lawyer thing ’cause that’s about Democrats, not liberals. But the truth of it is undeniable, as with the other two. Also, I’m no expressing an opinion on the desireability of any of these things–maybe they’re great ideas that liberals and Democrats should be proud of.)
NO modern-day conservative supports Jim Crow. So your proposed “counterexample” is totally inapposite. Why not try something actually relevant, such as “If you support banning homosexual sodomy but not heterosexual sodomy…” which Texas conservatives actually did.
Furthermore, your “If you like…thank a liberal” test is similarly ridiculous. You’re telling me that I am (or should be) a modern-day “liberal” based on the actions of people who called themselves “liberal” back when my grandfather was in high school. Fine, right back atcha: you should support Jim Crow because Democrats did back when my father was growing his hair to look like the Beatles. Dumb, no? Kinda like betting on the Green Bay Packers because they won the first Super Bowl four years after the Voting Rights Act passed.
This particular line of thought reached the apogee of silliness when an Op-Ed appeared in the campus newspaper of the U. of WA telling us we should be liberals because…Jesus was a liberal! Well, if being a conservative means supporting an oppressive foreign dictator’s military rule (and the routine use of crucifixion as a punishment for theft), sign me up for a tour with the Angry Left.
Seriously, I can’t wait to see your defining concepts because 1) I think I’ll agree with 90% of them and 2) I doubt they’ll meet the modern definition of “liberal.” More likely they’ll look a lot like the sort of thing the folks at National Review would agree with.
Just some quick examples…
>If you like the idea that Condi Rice is the NSC >advisor rather than an instructor at a >segregated secretarial school, thank a liberal.
Southern democrats supported segretation.
>If you like the Internet, thank a liberal
>(DARPANet was created in no small part thanks to >a government research grant).
Heavily utilized and made popular by the military. Republicans could easily be perceived as providing more support for the military.
I’ve got another one for you … if you’re not saying “Heil, Hitler” … thank a liberal (FDR).
Also, old style social conservatives worry about what you’re doing in the bedroom. Classic conservatives (aka classic liberals) and modern conservatives do not.
I know lots and lots of conservatives both on blogs and off who think, for example, that abortion should be legal (even when they call themselves pro-life), and that homosexuals should have equal rights and at a minimum civil unions.
I think your characterization of conservatives is so 1990s/1980s.
H.
And if you’re not saying “Da, tovarich,” thank several generations of conservatives, and definitly do NOT thank several generations of liberals who were all too cuddly with Communist thugs, and remain so today.
But who cares????
If you’re asking what you can do for your country, thank a guy named John.
If you enjoy the feel of a well-tuned 1911, thank a guy named John.
If Howard Dean goes down in the primaries, thank a guy named John.
If you love a good satire and appreciate the unflattering modern comparison of the French to Lilliputians, thank a guy named John.
If you think the Declaration of Independance is a great document, thank lots of guys, including one with really big handwriting named John.
If you love late ’70’s/early ’80’s punk music, thank a guy named John(ny).
If you like getting drunk on American-made whisky, thank a guy named John.
If you think the Justice Department is right to support the average American’s right to own guns, thank a guy named John.
And if you love non-stop pandering and arrogance in politics, thank a guy named Gray. And probably a bunch of others named John that no one’s ever heard of.
There isn’t much point to this sort of thing, because “liberal” and “conservative” are just names, like John.
In rough order:
Rob – I’m trying to recapture the definition of liberal from ‘one who is blessed by the liberal advocacy groups’. Note that I haven’t made a connection between party and ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ …
Mark – sorry, but as above, liberal != Democrat for much of American political history …
Howard – That’s a good one, thanks. And yes, one of the problems we have is that we’re using labels from the 1980’s to describe political affiloiations from the oughts, and while there are things they have in common, there are things that are different, too.
Rob^2 – cute! (re: “Da!” you mean liberals like Truman who were so weak in dealing with Communism, right?) But all words are ‘names’ and so since we’re out of zen/politics mode and into descriptive mode, we have to use words …
…A.L.
Rob, you forgot one:
And if you ever want the services of a hooker…
Ah, Truman! Good one. JFK, too, but then again he was a tax-cutter as well. But that’s part of my point: those people might have called themselves “liberals,” but that doesn’t have squat to do with what the people who call themselves “liberals” today believe. Any more than the ’66 Packers’ playbook has anything to do with the ’03 Packers’ playbook.
Words have meaning based on consensus. Right now, the consensus is that “liberal” means a lot of things like, for instance, support for illegal immigration and opposition to gun rights. You can’t just redefine it ala Humpty Dumpty. “Horny” used to mean “rough, calloused,” as in a sailor’s horny hands. You can’t banish the modern meaning just by waving your bloggy wand.
I fully support your project, but you’ve got an uphill battle. Good luck getting “liberal” back from the liberalistas–frankly, I don’t think you’ve got much of a chance, any more than I have a chance of convincing my local English department that “conservative” means anything other than “racist rapist.”
A.L.,
Frankly, I don’t have much hope for your list. “Liberal” has so many mutually exclusive definitions that depend crucially on context, that developing a definitive list is just not possible. For instance, you can make a perfectly decent argument that either the Democrats or the Republicans are the “liberal” party, depending on your definition.
One problem–you obviously seem to think that the term “liberal” is generally positive. What exactly is the opposing term? Classically, the term set in opposition to liberal was “conservative.” If you define liberal in opposition to conservative, and further define liberal as a good thing to be, how do you avoid describing “conservative” as a negative thing?
I suspect that your definition of liberal will be one that the majority of Americans would consider positive and self-describing. If I’m right, then it will also be worthless.
Most of the neo-conservatives are actually paleo-liberals, edged out of any claim to “liberalism” by neo-liberals who are actually mostly paleo-conservatives.
The wheel goes round and round…
Oh jeez, not this again.
I don’t know if it is liberal or conservative, but . . . if you love the advances that modern medicine has made in mitigating human suffering, thank the NIH, a government program. Yes, private industry brings the therapies to market, but these are usually based on fundamental science that industry would never fund at the level the government has.
“If you like the clean(er) air and water in our urban areas, thank a liberal.”
Perhaps this actually has something to do with the massive transition from coal-burning to the use of oil and gas that has occurred over the last 50 years or so.
Donno, David –
When I grew un in West Los Angeles in the 60’s, typical summer days had smog bad enough that you couldn’t see the end of the block. Were they burning coal here then?
We now have at least twice the number of vehicles and probably almost as many manufacturing jobs (although the mix is different and the overall % is lower), and we never have air that dirty…
…hmmm. AQMD, anyone?
A.L.
Donno, David –
When I grew un in West Los Angeles in the 60’s, typical summer days had smog bad enough that you couldn’t see the end of the block. Were they burning coal here then?
We now have at least twice the number of vehicles and probably almost as many manufacturing jobs (although the mix is different and the overall % is lower), and we never have air that dirty…
…hmmm. AQMD, anyone?
A.L.