Conservative and Liberal

I regard the way that most people use the words “conservative” and “liberal” as distortions of the language. Conservative and liberal are not states of being; they are modes. It doesn’t make any sense to say that someone is a liberal or a conservative. Liberal and conservative have more to do with energy. There are times when you can be liberal with your energy, and there are times when you have to be conservative with it. But you can’t be one way all the time. Nevertheless, we are trying to describe particular ideas when we use the two words as nouns, even if they have little to do with what the words actually mean. Conservative has generally referred to a person who clings to tradition or one who is cautious with money. But in today’s political arguments, it more often means someone who sees the rights of the individual as superior to those of the community.

In a healthy society—and in my opinion there are few, if any, these days—there is a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community. We really are all in this together, and to insist that one or the other is more important is to be an extremist. One of the symptoms of extremism is that one sees everything in terms of a great struggle between Good and Evil. During the Cold War, the two extremist philosophies of Marxism and Laissez-Faire Capitalism (today’s “conservatives”) went after the other’s jugular. The Marxists were just as convinced of the righteousness of their cause as the Capitalists were of theirs. I think it self-evident that it is extremism itself—doesn’t matter what kind—that leads to evil.

Now that the commies are gone, Conservatives tend to see Liberals as the Great Enemy. Linguistically speaking, conservative and liberal are opposites. But politically speaking, they’re merely sloppy tags and don’t actually represent two ideas in strict opposition to one another.

So what’s a liberal? In current, between-the-lines usage, I think of “a liberal” as someone who sees the need for balance between the individual and the community, who is nearer the objective philosophical center, but feels the rage of the right wing and is somewhat timid about standing up for the balance that they know is necessary. Liberals, then, aren’t really left of center—at least not to the left of the center of truth. They’re a wee bit too far right.

The Poverty of Our Language

One of the difficulties in trying to discuss anything in this country nowadays is that most of our words, especially those in political use, have lost their meaning. They’re all code and connotation. Like the words “liberal” and “conservative.” They’re not states of being; they are modes. There are times when one can be liberal and times when one must be conservative. But to say that one is “a liberal” or “a conservative” is wrong-headed. What do they mean? Stands that were considered moderate when I was growing up are now considered far left. During the election I often read about people who were “too conservative” to vote for a black man, as though racism were a conservative value. These days when people use the word conservative I think that what they really mean is “looking out for number one” and screwing anyone who gets in the way. During the Reagan era, conservatives often invoked “family values.” It sounded wholesome enough. But everybody I knew was extremely hostile to the term. I don’t think many of them stopped to ask why it angered them, but I think everybody knew—instinctively, at least—that what it really meant was “father knows best,” and simply because he was the father. That’s not a conservative value; it’s egotism. If there had been a real discussion of what family life was about, what it could be or should be, “family values” might have had some usefulness. But there was never any intention of that. Its sole purpose was its use as an emotional weapon in the so-called culture wars.

During the last twenty eight years, and during the last eight years especially, I’ve often felt that America is heading for some kind of civil war. No one can ever win such a war. It’ll only bust up the country for good. Americans need to have some real dialogue. But we’ll never even get a start on one until we stop abusing the language and start saying what we really mean.