Two widely accepted, often-conflicting ideologies drive much of today's political animus:
The conservative ideology is based on the concept that freedom of economic action underlies prosperity. At its extreme, this view prioritizes public policy that supports businesses operating in free markets, and discourages public policy that constrains business behavior. An extension of this ideology is the sacredness of individual freedom of action.
The liberal ideology is based on the concept of protecting the community: the family, the clan, the tribe, the State, the nation, and even the world.
As an aside, I would note that the term "liberal" is often applied to both ideologies! To many economic thinkers, "liberal" and "neoliberal" refer to free markets; a liberal, then, is one like Mises, Hayek, Friedman, or Ayn Rand who advocates free markets. In today's politics, however, a liberal is almost the opposite: one who accepts freedom of economic action as the basis for prosperity, but would impose constraints for the sake of community protection.
With respect to Mark's latest posting, I would only say that the above conceptual understanding of our political differences makes more sense to me than Mark's rather conspiratorial approach. Hence, although Mark infers a cabal of Democratic (liberal) conspirators using a mentally defective Joe Biden as a Trojan horse to gain control of the country, I see the coming election as a choice between an erratic Republican candidate who has no concern for any community outside some members of his own family and who has no competence in dealing with the problems of communities, against a slightly older Democrat who respects freedom of economic action as the engine of prosperity, but is also surrounded by and responsive to people who are very good at public policy and who himself has great proven interest and competence in dealing with the policies that protect communities.
Mark seems to think that any Democrat, even the most conservative of the primary candidates, threatens radical changes to the fabric of American society, changes that would destroy both prosperity and liberty. Where we disagree, I think, is about which candidate for President represents such radical change.
It's bothersome to me, albeit revealing, that modern-day Democrats have largely abandoned the proud term "liberal" in favor of "progressive" to describe their ideology. "Liberal" implies an openness to new ideas and a tolerance for other people and their differing styles and points of view. I don't think the rising generation of Democrats today choose to see themselves in that light any more.
ReplyDeleteThe word "progressive", on the other hand, is ambiguous and has in the past been employed by everybody from Teddy Roosevelt's Republicans to WWII-era American Communists. That covers what is to me a disturbingly large amount of ground. The term implies identification with the forward march of history, and this is more consistent with the image our new Democrats like to project. There's usually nothing all that liberal about a march.
I suppose I am, as Keith suggests, taking a somewhat conspiratorial view of what's happening to Democrats now. I do believe that the brain trust behind the Party has gone hard-left and is no longer liberal in any sense of the word. But they also know they can't win a national election on a hard-left platform and need to disguise their objectives. And, yes, while I didn't use the terminology, I am viewing Biden as something of a Trojan horse. There is, in my judgment, a good change that, if elected, he would be unable to serve out his term. The leaders of his party of course know this too. The choice of his running mate is going to tell us a lot.