Look in the Mirror
The striking similarities between successful liberals and conservatives
M. Harrison, for the editors

The unsuspecting American liberal college student must be in for a surprise when he sets off on a European study abroad program. His expected immersion in a bastion of "liberalism" never materializes, at least semantically: European "liberals" are pro-market.

The reason for this is that European liberals, unlike American liberals, have stayed true to the authentic meaning of liberalism. Classical liberalism, a product of the Enlightenment, held as its original values individual freedom, science and technology, progress and prosperity, and a general commitment to individualism and innovation. While American liberals preserve some of these social ideals, it is the economic attitudes which most distinguish European liberalism. In Europe, "liberalization" is synonymous with "privatization." A European "liberal", without other modifiers, is an unabashed capitalist. These Europeans borrow from great liberal thinkers - not just Locke and Mill, but Smith and Hayek as well.

Despite their generally rabid (and illiberal) anti-market attitudes, American liberals have seen their greatest recent success embracing the market - following their European counterparts. Bill Clinton, the only Democratic president since Roosevelt to serve two full elected terms, was not coincidentally one of the most pro-market Democrats to ever take office. Aside from likely inducing several cemetary rollovers from FDR, the impact of Mr. Clinton's pro-market apostasy was the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and the ratification of NAFTA. These two watershed pro-market policy achievements, leaving alone their impact on the ideological climate, far exceed the achievements of Mr. Bush, his supposedly pro-market successor. Fusing social liberalism with pro-market policies, Mr. Clinton showed, can work to the benefit of American liberalism.

Clinton called his guardedly pro-market liberalism the Third Way, and he used it to bring the Democrats unprecedented success. Too few of today's prominent Democrats remember the lesson. While current Democratic politicians grovel for votes by bashing "the market" in bumbling stump speeches to disaffected unionized factory workers, their think tanks are smart enough learn from his history and embrace the Third Way as the well from which good ideas are drawn. The Brookings Institution, for example, recently proposed a welfare reform to create the equivalent of personal Welfare accounts. Payroll taxes go directly to a worker's personal account, instead of the federal coffers, for if he ever becomes unemployed. If he needs more money than he has in his account, the government covers everything, but he has to pay it all back (certain low-wage workers are exempt). The idea is excellent, and would be not out of place in a pro-market think tank, and certainly this one supports it.

The lesson for Democrats: The smartest liberals are proposing classical liberal ideas, and the most successful ones are putting them into practice.

Conservatives are facing a similar, yet ideologically reversed, crisis of identity. Conservatism is a far older philosophy than liberalism, and can thus its history can be tied to all sorts of loyalist and despotic sympathies spanning millenia. However, original American conservatism, given structure and soul by the work of William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater in the 1950s and 1960s, has a very distinct character. It was an ideology of reflexively limited government, a maximization of individual freedom, and a firm belief in the free market.

One may notice a similarity. True conservatism's belief in markets and individual freedom is highly similar to the classical liberalism that the American liberals abandoned and reversed, and to which Clinton's Third Way slowly edged closer.

And echoing a similar unfortunate lack of foresight as the liberals, contemporary American conservativism has abandoned all three of its core principles. Limited government has been replaced by a massive current account deficit and expanding executive power, individual freedom has been replaced by Moral Values Legislation, and market principles have been replaced by protectionist instincts and cronyist tendencies. In this way, conservatives are acting like the liberals - abandoning their founding principles.

One doesn't need the arguments of this editorial to prove that American conservatism is dying - one needs only to consult the founders of American conservatism. Barry Goldwater's own granddaughter, author of a recent biography of the elective conservative patriarch, has publically admitted that the "conservatism" of George W. Bush and his neoconservative myrmidons bears no resemblance to true Goldwater conservatism. Mr. Buckley has been even more unequivocal, stating simply, among more eloquent critiques, "Bush is not a conservative."

Predictably, these nascent big-government conservatives are facing impending election losses, losses potentially prevented only by the Democrats own aforementioned ideological failures. The libertarian-leaning conservatism, the ideological motor behind the Mr. Buckley's movement that returned limited government to national popularity, has been completely shunned from the ranks of the Republican Party.

As America becomes more polarized, the irony is that the shared beliefs of classical liberals and true conservatives contain the greatest advantages for both sides. Despite Clinton's Third Way being the last successful Democratic electoral strategy, and despite limited government conservatism lifting a fringe ideology to national popularity, liberals and conservatives appear loath to smell the proverbial coffee.

If opinion polls and anecdotal evidence are to be trusted, these shared ideals, currently disregarded by the present crop of neoconservatives and Pelosi liberals, are what the American people actually desire. 20% of the American electorate defines themselves as "fiscally conservative but socially liberal," versus 23% and 25% for outright liberalism and conservatism. (It is unknown how many of the self-identified liberals and conservatives are actually classical liberals and limited-government conservatives.)

One can call the philosophy true conservatism, or classical liberalism. But there is another word for this forgotten direction toward individual freedom and market-driven prosperity: libertarianism. This organization stands for this forgotten libertarian ideal, waiting eagerly to rescue either party from its self-destructive, statist dalliances. Will the liberals first embrace the Third Way of classical liberalism (again), or will the conservatives first embrace true conservatism (again)? When will polarized America realize that we all agree on a lot more than we previously thought?

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written by James, March 23, 2008

I agree with the overarching sentiment of this article however, suggesting Clinton's NAFTA position as free-market solution is slightly questionable. If it was a truly free-market, government regulations such as NAFTA would be considered the antithesis of a free-market.

...again though, great article.

-James
www.thepoliticus.org

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