Liberals: What Do Liberals Get Wrongest?
1. Presumably no one will be so pedantic as to quibble with 'wrongest'. It's a perfectly cromulent word.
2. No conservatives get to comment on this thread Tom this means YOU.
3. No answers of the form "we care too much" or "we're not liberal enough" or "we don't stand up for our (noble, pure, true) values enough." Get it?
Even I shouldn't be able to comment on this because it's easy for me to just enumerate a bunch of things I disagree with liberals about...
But--ignoring my standard gripes about guns, immigration, the death penalty, etc... I guess I'd have to say...something like...liberals underestimate the threat to individual autonomy posed by the nanny state, and the threat to the ideal of self-reliance posed by the welfare state.
[Note: you don't get to disagree with my points here...you have to come up with your own criticisms of liberalism.]
Heck, I'm a liberal, right? But there are all sorts of things about liberalism that keep me up at night. I worry that we're nicey-nicing ourselves into a kind of soft totalitarian state. Does e.g. nationalized health care sound like a good idea to me on the face of it? Sure! But do I want us all to become more and more dependent on the state, until it gains so much leverage over us that it can easily manipulate us without even trying? Not exactly...
1. Presumably no one will be so pedantic as to quibble with 'wrongest'. It's a perfectly cromulent word.
2. No conservatives get to comment on this thread Tom this means YOU.
3. No answers of the form "we care too much" or "we're not liberal enough" or "we don't stand up for our (noble, pure, true) values enough." Get it?
Even I shouldn't be able to comment on this because it's easy for me to just enumerate a bunch of things I disagree with liberals about...
But--ignoring my standard gripes about guns, immigration, the death penalty, etc... I guess I'd have to say...something like...liberals underestimate the threat to individual autonomy posed by the nanny state, and the threat to the ideal of self-reliance posed by the welfare state.
[Note: you don't get to disagree with my points here...you have to come up with your own criticisms of liberalism.]
Heck, I'm a liberal, right? But there are all sorts of things about liberalism that keep me up at night. I worry that we're nicey-nicing ourselves into a kind of soft totalitarian state. Does e.g. nationalized health care sound like a good idea to me on the face of it? Sure! But do I want us all to become more and more dependent on the state, until it gains so much leverage over us that it can easily manipulate us without even trying? Not exactly...
posted by Winston Smith at
6:12 PM
20 Comments:
This may not meet your rules, but I think the biggest problem with liberals today is that, collectively, we assume that the core of today's Republican party wants to govern when what they seem to really want is a hegemony on political power.
And so we underestimate just how duplicitous today's Republicans can be (and will be).
Yeah, jim, I think Winston's going to probably call shenanigans on that answer.
As for myself, I think liberals central error is accepting the premise the democratic governance and corporate capitalism are complimentary structures, but then again I'm not really a liberal, either, though I usually end up voting for them out of sheer terror.
We liberals fail to recognize that liberty includes the right to do stupid things like smoke cigarettes and drink too much and eat fatty food and leave our seat belts off and say, "Hey, watch this." In fact, for many people, that's what liberty is.
I mean, as long as we're concerned about motes rather than timbers...
Since it's agin the rules, I won't even get into all our tactical flaws. Like obeying the rules...
I think we liberals have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to criticism. At least, the liberals/leftists I hang out with tend to be so focused on the thousand things that are wrong with the country, they end up convincing themselves that things are irreversibly screwed. However, it's been my personal experience that some ingenuity and a positive attitude can fix an awful lot of stuff (although not everything, admittedly.) That's a big part of the reason why, although I dislike Reagan nearly as much as Winston seems to, I have to give the man credit for charging the country up after the '70's. While the 80's themselves were nothing to write home about, I do wonder if we'd have had the boom years of the 90's without Reagan.
Also, with regard to the universal healthcare discussion above, I'd like to see liberals come up with a philosophical principal that's able to convincingly articulate how much government regulation and support is the right amount. Conservatives tend to have it easier in this regard, I think - less government is always better (for political purposes, at least.) On the other hand, while I do think some kind of universal health care policy would be good I can't make an argument for one that hits as simply and cleanly as "no socialized medicine!" does for the other side, while still communicating the right nuances.
In short, we need better sloganeers.
This is a really great questoin, I'll probably post a few comments as I think about things, but this is what comes to mind:
Liberals do a really crappy job of explaining their fondness and hopes for government it terms that people identify with and understand and respect, namely the universal language of family and friends, that is, a government that cares for you and takes care of you but doesn't get in your way or be too nosy.
I care about my family and friends, regardless of their political leanings. I support them and try to help them and recognize some human needs as necessary and, therefore, the government should provide them because not everyone has family and friends to help them out when they need it.
While WS worries about nanny states and loss of personal liberty, these things are (in my opinion) secondary when a person is sick, or addicted, or really poor. A floor needs to be set by the government, a floor that is too low in my opinion right now. I am more concerned about basic human needs and dignity first, and only secondarily concerned with ideas such as personal autonomy, which in my mind, is worth a fig if you are hungry or sick.
Also, as the recent warrantless wiretapping shows, it is not the government, per se, that we have to fear, but government and business interests in combo. In short, I do not fear my government by itself, I fear it in conjunction with corporate power.
And I fear corporate power all by itself, as it operates independent of, or in cahoots with, the government. I hate AT&T a lot more than I hate the DMV.
That said, while I support and try to help my family and friends, and they do the same for me, they can piss off when it comes to my decisions regarding gun ownership, who I marry, or date, what job I decide to have, where I live, if I smoke, gamble, if I get laid a lot, etc. I want my autonomy, but not I don' paritcularly relish my right to be poor, or sick, or without insurance, or locked into a de facto caste system of those who have more than enough and those who are constantly working as hard as hell to simply tread water.
So...I think liberals like me tend to try to expand our personal ideas of family and frienship to a larger realm...that is, society. We fail when we make moral judgments of those we don't know when it is clear that we would never make similar judgments of our family and friends. If it is OK with me that my brother likes to hunt, it should be OK if anyone wants to. Likewise with abortions, drugs, sexual preference, etc. If you are OK with your family and friends doing it, why not others. Big reason I truly do not like GOPers, as everything does not exist unless it affects them personally (see, for example, Cheneys, Andrew Sullivan, stem cell converts, etc.).
Put another way, liberals do a poor job of extending the benefit of the doubt to those they do not know personally, and also a poor job of explaining why it is that we feel empathy, sympathy, and care about those people who we do not know personally, but still want to help to do well.
In my mind, conservatives suffer from a huge gap in the ability to imagine themselves in unfortunate circumstances, and also a misguided idea that every bad thing must have someone or something responsible for its cause (usaully the victim so far as I can tell). They also have no qualms about applying different standards for their family and friends as compare to "everyone else."
Liberals, on the other hand, often seem to want to treat eveyone the same, but don't know when to say enough is enough. We also are unwilling to offer a full-throated defense of government, because, as we all "know," government is the problem.
This is not true. Government is necessary, and it does a lot of things better than the private sector. We never hear about "socialized" highway systems, or transit systems, or water purification systems, or the "socialized" military, police force, school system (OK, sometims you do on that one). Liberals need to do a better job of explaning what things government is good at, and why, and getting out of the way, or at least not tangled up in, other issues that the private sector does better.
That said, the private sector would be a lot more compelling in its arguments if it didn't require government subsidies for just about any large project it undertakes (ethanol, wireless, oil exploration, etc.).
That's my rant, I sticking to it until someone tears me a new one.
Two things?
a) Lacan? Come on now.
b) I don't like that there is a reluctance to say 'this is bad' or 'this is stupid' or 'this hurts what we are trying to accomplish' to ideas. For example, only recently has there been a push to kick 911 truthers away from the left, which has been LONG overdue. Someone more into po-mo hating than I am could probably trace this kind of thing back to that kind of thing.
I'm not really anti-postmodernism by any stretch. I liked Foucault's essays and books on power and knowledge a lot. However, I read it as saying 'this is how things interact with each other' rather than 'this is a harmful relationship'. Maybe it is a liberal reflex to assume that any power relationship automatically has someone getting unjustly screwed; I think that is just stupid. I suppose most of my 'argh liberals' beef comes from this kind of problem.
Biggest problem with liberals? We're afraid of the word itself. We've allowed conservatives to set how the public thinks about the word liberal, and so we have to come up with other words to make our core beliefs sound more palatable.
We let conservatives get away with framing the debate. For example, conservatives decried the welfare state and came up with examples of people gaming the system, and liberals didn't bother to point out that these were outliers, and when you looked at the facts, another picture emerged.
Third, our wackos make a worse impression than their wackos. Don't get me wrong, I believe that everyone has the right to look and dress as they choose. However, if you are trying to make a point, people are going to be a lot more willing to listen to you if you're well groomed and in a nice suit than if you look like you haven't bathed in a week and don't understand the finer points of grooming. It may not be right, but that's the way people are. You can make the most salient points in the world, but if you look like a member of the fringe, that's how you're going to be treated. People are often scared of the different and the unusual, whether that's justifiable or not. If you want to change people's minds with a new idea, you have to present yourself and that idea in a way that is most palatable to your audience. It's how you game the system.
Of course the biggest problem is that the liberal tends to be the default if you're opposed to conservatives. So sometimes it feels like we're trying to please everyone and instead just pissing everyone off. We want to try and make everyone happy, and so each individual's core beliefs get lost in the muddle.
At least that's how it seems to me.
Michelle K
While echoing Lovable Liberal's comment (Good good point. I found myself nodding along as I read.), I'd also like to add that we on the left have turned 'making the perfect into the enemy of the good' into some kind of virtue . . . and the farther left you go, the worse it gets.
Which is why the 'dream candidates' of much of the left are guys who are utterly freaking unelectable and useless on a national stage. Dudes like Nader and Kucinich, in other words. It's not a bug that they'd never be able to get shit done politically, it's a feature.
If you never have to govern, you never have to compromise, and on the left, we'll fucking shiv you for each and every compromise you make.
This discussion is really interesting to me, FWIW.
Additionally, and as a follow up to LL's comment I agree with so much, I think that the left often confuses infringements on individual liberties and regulation of corporations.
That is, they've got no problem saying, "cigarettes should be taxed more," or, "Food should not contain saturated fat," or whatever, and their primary focus ends up being that therefore Marlboro will end up making less money or McDonald's will have to change its recipe, rather than recognizing that they are, in fact, making it harder for individuals to make certain choices that they disagree with.
It's a balancing act, and I'm certainly not anti-regulation, but I don't generally think that there's enough recognition on the left that it is a balancing act, and that folks who object to (for example) public smoking laws aren't just deluded tools of Winston-Salem, but are actually real people whose liberties are actually being infringed.
Maybe it's worth it, maybe it's not, but it's a real cost.
Well, I think Hayek was right about the biggest theoretical problem, but wrong in his extrapolation all the way to serfdom. It's kind of in the air right now: yesterday's Nobel prize is about attempts to model economic 'games' beyond simple capitalism.
Regulation, and government programs in general, do tend to grow beyond what is necessary or desirable, largely because it comes with an inbuilt constituency.
The biggest problem is in health care: we have set up what is effectively a govern-mandated guild system to provide health care. The result is astronomical costs, and a vast black market in illegal drugs. (This is a distinct problem from how it gets paid for.)
Of course, these problems are hardly unique to liberalism. Conservatives have an inordinate propensity towards growth in prison and military spending.
While I agree with the general principle LL and Myca are promoting, I think anti-smoking laws (at least some of them), are not a good example.
They're not a good example because those that prohibit smoking where others can't help but inhale smoke are designed to protect those others from the effects of the smoker's exercise of his own freedom. Or to put it more succinctly, your freedom ends where my nose begins.
J.S. Mill said it considerably more eloquently in ON LIBERTY, when he wrote:
"That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to someone else."
Now, a related, though not identical concept is that of assuring that those who do harm to others, even inadvertently, compensate those who are harmed. In the rubric of economics, the general concept is known as an externality: some cost or benefit that is imparted to a party or parties other than those directly involved in an economic transaction.
Again smoking provides a good example. We tax cigarettes not to punish them, but to compensate non-smokers who would otherwise subsidize the insurance plans in which they participate with smokers, and to help defray the cost of lost productivity due to increased frequency of illness in smokers.
Another example would be "polluter pays" laws. Both individuals and corporations often attempt to socialize the implicit costs that result from the conduct of their business (e.g. pollution, stress on infrastructure etc.), forcing neighbors and sometimes society as a whole to bear the costs of the damage done. The alternative to regulating the conduct beforehand is the imposition of taxes, fees and fines after the fact to pay for the repair of the damage or to at least compensate those harmed. Whether to regulate beforehand, fine after the fact, or impose *Pigouvian* taxes to reflect the cost of externalities is a huge discussion for which I don't really have time now.
anon-
I think you are wrong about anti-smoking laws, at least about recent ones. Some of them are about no smoking in your own home, or no smoking outdoors. These rules are pure nanny-state, and have nothing to do with whether or not other people are potentially injured or even inconvenienced. Anti-smoking laws are a good example of how a good idea can be taken too far by people with an interest. These laws are driven in part by interest groups who get their donations by sponsoring antismoking laws, with the logical result that they continue passing laws even when they are excessive.
As for taxing cigarettes to fund health-care...they don't call those taxes sin taxes for nothing. Yes, health insurance is part of it, but it's also to discourage cigarette smoking. I'd like to see the same thing applied to other mind-altering drugs...
-mac
mac,
If that is the case with some of the anti-smoking laws, then I agree that they are wrong. No way you shouldn't be allowed to smoke outdoors. I would reference the passage of Mill I quoted. In your home? I have no idea how that could be enforced without violating the Bill of Rights, but if you have kids, you are definitely endangering their welfare, and they are presumed to be unable to protect their own rights due to incomplete autonomy - still, I don't think a legitimate case could be made for a law.
As far as the "sin" taxes go, just because they're called that by some, doesn't mean that moral opprobrium or even necessarily cessation is the goal of the tax. There's no similar tax on gambling, cussing, adultery or various other "sins". Take away the harm to others, and the support for any kind of tax shrinks to just the kind of people who would drive me and Mill mad.
Another example of Special Treatment, BTW, WS.
I have made it my custom to remain silent on posts where you criticize the left. Perhaps I should have made a bigger deal of it so that the critics would notice.
N.B., for a year or more now, even at my groupblog, I have drawn a distinction between "liberal" and "left."
Altho I consider the left wrong on most things, I could be a liberal. My mom loved FDR and hated the GOP of the 1930s-70s.
I found myself unable to come with a legitimate counterargument.
As always, cheers.
Special treatment how? By not also asking "what's wrongest about conservatives?" I'm genuinely not getting this.
WS, you could start a post on the worst wrongs of conservatives and forbid liberals from commenting. That of course would be separate but equal, but TVD can defend that, I would guess.
Apropos of smoking, I'm not against all regulation. I worked for a company once that was run by Italians, and against all known physics all their smoke wound up in my office. I could have used a little help with that.
But the Boards of Health that want to regulate smoking out of existence instead of persuading it out of existence are like the WCTU. It's enough to keep kids away from cigarettes and leave the adults to look after themselves so long as they don't harm the rest of us.
Sure, I think smoking is dangerous, noxious, and filthy. But I like to hike in the wilderness, which can be at least two of those, and I don't want national health care, whether such as it is or something more thorough and consistent, to mandate that I have to get my exercise and spiritual uplift indoors in safety.
Well, and in terms of the 'business regulation vs. private liberty' discussion, it doesn't even need to be about smoking. Let's have the same talk about violent video games, male frontal nudity in movies, or obscene song lyrics.
I think that when the left (or at least the elected left) talks about these things, they generally discuss it in terms of 'regulation of industry' . . . which is legitimate but not complete.
---Myca
LL,
I don't disagree with you about the fact that people go overboard when it comes to these things. In those cases, I'm right there rolling my eyes with you...
However, the probability of your hiking in the wilderness harming me physically or financially is negligible compared to you smoking with me in the room.
The slippery slope argument is problematic because EVERYTHING is a slippery slope. Every infringement on rights or freedoms can in a chain of reductionist logic, be shown to lead to absurd abridgements of freedom. Which is why I think every proposal should be evaluated solely on its own merits.
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