A Liberal Dose, March 25, 2021 "The Difference Between Liberal and Conservative"

 

“THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE”

Today I want to once more explore some political terms and put them in historical context. This time we’ll tackle liberal and conservative, and touch on progressive. As discussed in a previous column, “liberal” originally referred to the protection of individual liberties. By the twentieth century, though, it had come to be understood more in the sense of its other meaning, “generous” or “open-handed.” A government, like a person, that is liberal seeks to extend the benefits of government to as many people as possible. This is done by being an “activist government” that gets directly involved. That means spending money, and that means raising money to spend, which is done through taxes. Liberal has also come to mean tolerant, accepting of different cultures, and willing to accept new ideas and new ways of doing things.

Joe Biden’s stimulus was extremely liberal. Every Republican in Congress voted against it –even though the vast majority of their own supporters were for it –because they are conservative.

Conservatives, of course, conserve. They wish to conserve in a fiscal sense by calling for a government that spends less –though, in reality, for the past few decades conservative administrations have tended to spend more money than liberal ones. The difference is how and on whom they spend it. There tend to be fewer beneficiaries of that spending, and they tend to be corporations or extremely wealthy people. Conservatives also call for less taxation. When the economy takes a dramatic downturn, conservatives tend to want the government to spend less, and to lower taxes on the wealthy. They argue that if the people at the very top are taxed less, they will have more money to invest and grow their businesses, which will create jobs and raise everyone’s status eventually. A liberal government, meanwhile, tends to spend more during an economic downturn- on federal projects that create jobs, and by getting money into the hands of the poor and working class who will spend it for their needs and boost the economy by doing so. Countless studies have demonstrated that the conservative “trickle-down” theory does not work. When wealthy people get more money (via tax cuts), they tend not to go out and spend it but rather to hold on to it, which does no one (but them) any good.

Conservatives also tend to conserve, or protect, traditions and the status quo. If things have always been done a certain way, then that’s how they should continue to be done. This applies to traditional ideas about family, church, sexuality, culture, etc. I am reminded of the words of the great western novelist Elmer Kelton, who said, “I don’t write about good guys in white hats versus bad guys in black hats. but about two guys in gray hats, one trying to institute change and the other resisting it.” In such a story, depending on your point of view, either character could be the protagonist. In their own point of view, each one honestly believes he is the hero. This also sums up the liberal/conservative divide in America, though obviously it is more complex and layered. Nonetheless, it goes back to the balance between the individual and the community that has been a point of discussion since this country was founded.  

For over a century now, the Republicans have been the conservative party and the Democrats have been the liberal one. For most of that time, though, there was always a liberal wing of the Republican Party and a conservative wing of the Democratic Party. It was sort of like the the taijitu, or Yin-Yang symbol  –two oppositional forces created balance, in part due to the fact each one incorporated some elements of the other. Liberal Republicans started disappearing in the Reagan years, and by the 21^st century were pretty much gone. Instead of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, today we have a handful of “moderates” in each party –who really aren’t that moderate, inasmuch as they vary only slightly, and only occasionally, from their party lines. If that has been true of politicians, it has become equally true of their voters.

Allow me to restate my earlier definition: liberals embrace change, conservatives resist change. They want things to stay as they are, or maybe even go back to how they used to be.

Among other things, this is demonstrated in how each group views the Constitution. Liberals are often “Loose constructionists” who say the Constitution is a living document that changes to meet the needs of the time. Many conservatives are “strict constructionists” who believe the Constitution says what it says, and nothing more –and that even what it says has to be examined in the light of what its framers understood in the 18^th century. Since I’m a liberal and this is my column, I’ll go ahead and put this out there- if the Constitution remained unchanged from the 1700s, women would not be able to vote, Native Americans would not be citizens, and there might still be slavery. I would add that, since the Constitution itself as originally written provided for amendments to be added, you can’t argue the framers never wanted it to be changed in any way.

I said earlier that Republicans have been the conservative party for over a century. But it wasn’t always that way. From the party’s formation in 1854 and for decades thereafter, it was the liberal party and Democrats were the conservatives. 1800s Republicans wanted to change the status quo: they wanted to expand civil rights, expand the role of government in protecting them, and end slavery. 1800s Democrats wanted the opposite of all those things. One thing that has mostly remained unchanged from the 1854 Republicans, though, is the idea baked into the party that if everyone is given an equal shot they have a chance –with hard work and a little luck –at success. I think that the big difference between the parties today on that point lies in determining what an equal shot looks like and how you guarantee is –and that’s how political parties should work. We agree on what is right and fair and each propose our plan on how to get there.

The Populist movement took hold in a big way in the 1880s. Farmers and workers joined forces to protest the “robber barons” of the Gilded Age, which led to the creation of a third party in the 1890s (the Progressive Party), which won several governorships and congressional seats. Among other things, they wanted to expand workers’ rights. By 1900, Democrats and Republicans alike started adopting Progressive policies and for about twenty years every politician was progressive to some extent. Some argue that when that situation ended after WWI, around 1920, is when Republicans and Democrats starting switching poles as to who was conservative. Certainly those poles were fully reversed by the 1960s. Eventually, liberals started calling themselves progressives because liberal had become a dirty word.

But here’s the thing. You can’t stop change, at best you can only slow it down. Things that are considered normal today were considered too liberal a generation or less ago.

I guess the real difference is between “Make America Great Again” and “Make America Greater Than Ever, Now.”

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A Liberal Dose, March 18, 2021: "The Social Contract and the Role of Government"

 

This week I am going to talk about what government is supposed to be, according to the worldview of the Founding Fathers (that is, the prevailing thoughts among philosophers and intellectuals whose works influenced the Revolutionary generation.) I know most of you already know the terms I am going to use, but I am still going to boil them down for you. We will start with “The Enlightenment.” That is the period in European history from the mid-1600s through the end of the 1700s, in which educated people began to rely on the scientific method and their own logic and senses rather than accepting things by tradition, superstition, or because church leaders said so. An Enlightenment figure everyone would immediately recognize would be Sir Isaac Newton.

In part, the Enlightenment came about as a reaction to more than a century of intense warfare between Protestants and Catholics after the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Many people began to think there has to be a better way. One avenue of life philosophers began to examine was politics. Before the Enlightenment, you weren’t really the citizen of a nation, you were the subject of a king. The king ruled by Divine Right –that is, he is the king because God made him the king, otherwise someone else would be king, so you have to do absolutely everything he says or you are resisting God.

In the mid-to-late 1600s, two important English intellectuals enter the picture: Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Between the two of them (and others) we got a concept of government known as The Social Contract. In this view, individuals become rulers because the people allow them to become rulers. Those rulers may stay in place as long as they carry out their part of the deal.

At some point in the distant past, after a long time of humans being part of nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, people figured out they needed to put certain people in charge to provide security for everybody else. In order to accomplish that, they had to give up some of their rights –by giving the leaders authority to make rules for the benefit and safety of the whole group. The citizens did not, however, give up their “natural rights” –what Thomas Jefferson called “unalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence. “Unalienable” means you cannot be separated from them, and vice versa. Today we would call these “human rights.” They include the right to worship as you wish, to speak your mind, and so forth. So the rights you voluntarily give up are, I guess you could say, the “alienable” ones that are not basic human rights. For example, to keep the roads safe, society gives up their right to drive as fast as they want and gives the government the right to enforce speed limits.

We “give” the government these rights by participating in a representative democracy and exercising our vote. The implicit agreement is that if the majority of citizens decide differently than we do, we agree to abide by it even if we don’t like it. In return, the government we put in place agrees to, in the words of the preamble to the Constitution, “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

They have to do that without violating our natural, or human, rights. If the government is not providing the services they are supposed to, for everybody, or if they are going too far and taking away rights no human being should be asked to surrender, they have violated the contract. And we are justified in kicking them out and making a new contract with new leaders, who WILL carry out their responsibilities.

Now, so far it may seem like I am not saying anything much different than a lot of conservative commentators: “if the government is tyrannous, kick them out!”

But there are some major differences. For example, if you truly understand the principle of the Social Contract (as the Founding Fathers did), you will understand the government is not automatically your enemy just because it is the government. The government is not automatically tyrannous just because it sets rules and laws. The government is not betraying you because it chooses to use some of the tax money you give it on programs that “promote the general welfare” or common good. All those things are part of the government’s job –the job the people gave it, and continue to give it by participating in democracy. And the people have a job, too. Their job is to have that civic virtue/civic duty and participate in that small-r republicanism I’ve spoken of in this column before. Their job is also to realize that the government is in place to protect the community AND the individual – a truly republican democracy is not a mob.

There is also a very high bar for what constitutes tyranny. “Tyranny” is not just something you don’t like, or did not vote for. It is a large-scale suppression of human rights. The participants of Shays’ Rebellion in 1786/87 believed (correctly) that Massachusetts tax laws were unfair. They also believed they had the right to start an armed rebellion over it –which was put down. This incident is what prompted George Washington to come out of his retirement (which he was enjoying) and start lobbying for a new political structure (the Constitution) that would give the national government the authority and ability to put down such rebellions in the future. This differed from the Revolution because the people of Massachusetts (the state) had political representation, whereas the colonists had not. The participants of the early 1790s Whiskey Rebellion believed (again, accurately) that whiskey taxes were unfair to farmers. This time Washington, president by then, personally led troops (at least partway) to quell the riot. My point is: George Washington had absolutely no patience for people who started armed uprisings against a government in which they were represented (as opposed to a king or a parliament that allowed you no voice). The proper way to address such issues is with the vote, not with guns, and not liking the tax law did not qualify as an excuse for rebellion.

Since the late 1970s, conservatives have doubled down on the idea that government is the enemy of the people. It strikes me as kind of funny how many people who claim to hate government run for government office. It is also funny how many non-politician conservatives hate government until their side is in charge, then they claim it cannot be questioned or else you are a traitor. And how many conservatives who consider any government actions for the public good as communist or even treasonous will start yelling for government help when it is THEIR state that is flooded or on fire.

Here's the deal. If you are going to claim the government works for you, you will have to admit that means the government actually has a job. A job that is supposed to benefit everybody, not just the ones who voted for it.

It’s in the contract.

A Liberal Dose, March 11, 2021: "Republicanism, George Washington, and Cowboys"

 

Republicanism, George Washington, and Cowboys.

 

I’d like to talk this week about two concepts that may not mean exactly what you’d initially think: liberalism and republicanism. Now, I’m not talking about the 21^st century usage of these words –liberal as a synonym for progressive, or republican as the conservative political party –I’m talking about the 18^th century meanings, as used by the founding generations of our country and the framers of the Constitution. Sometimes people identify those earlier meanings with the terms “classical liberalism” and “small-r republicanism.”

The latter idea probably had the largest immediate impact on the establishment of our country. Strictly speaking, “republican” just means pertaining to a country whose form of government does not involve a monarch –but to George Washington, John Adams. Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and others, it meant far more to that. To them –following the example of the classical Roman statesman Cincinnatus –republicanism revolved around civic virtue, civic duty, and “promoting the general Welfare” or the common good. If that last phrase sounds familiar, it is found in the preamble to the Constitution (which many of you know, because Burl Johnson spent decades at WCHS making people memorize it).

Let me reiterate that. Republicanism stresses civic virtue, civic duty, and the general welfare/common good. In other words, a good republican citizen feels it is their solemn duty to serve the needs of their community, even when doing so is a sacrifice. Especially then. George Washington believed this –and that’s how they were able to convince him to stand for president even though he really didn’t want to. He wanted to go back into retirement at Mount Vernon. But when enough people told him that he was the only one with enough respect and clout to hold the new country together, and that it would be in danger without him, he reluctantly gave in. It was even harder to convince him to run for a second term, and impossible to make him do a third. But he did serve those two terms, because he felt his duty to the greater good compelled him to do so.

Now let’s talk about liberalism. It comes from Latin/French root words meaning “freedom” (like liberty and liberate). One of the most common definitions of “liberal” is generous or open-handed, not stingy. In the classical sense, though, liberalism pertains to individual freedom. Scottish economist Adam Smith’s 1776 classic book Wealth of Nations is a perfect example of 18^th century liberalism- it called for the government to allow business a free hand in how the economy was run, as opposed to regulating it (which doesn’t sound liberal in the modern sense). Smith believed that if everyone in the economy is each looking out for their own profit, it will “raise all boats” by providing checks and balances and thereby benefiting everybody. James Madison was influenced by Smith, and those ideas –applied to politics instead of finance –made it into his draft of the Constitution, with the three branches of government designed to hold each other in check.

As you probably know, the Founding Fathers were somewhat divided on the idea of a Constitution that created a federal government. Some, like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, feared it would make the central government too powerful. Others, like Washington in particular, believed a powerful central government was needed in order to get things done. One thing the Anti-federalists really didn’t like about the new Constitution: it barely even mentioned individual rights. As a compromise, the Bill of Rights –the first ten amendments –was added to take care of that issue.

Here is my point. From the very beginning, some of the Founding Fathers talked about the importance of a strong national government that is empowered to promote the general welfare and the greater common good, while others talked about the importance of individual freedom and the need to enshrine protections of it. Most of them agreed that we needed to strike a balance that would do both of those things.

There is nothing more American than arguing about that balance between the community and the individual. It has even become enmeshed in our national mythology. By the 1830s, with the Industrial Revolution in full swing and many Americans feeling like cogs in a machine, pop culture of the time began to romanticize the frontiersman as a symbol of ruggedness, individualism, and freedom. Within a few decades that imagery had been transferred to the American cowboy, and to a large degree still is. Think about all the westerns you have watched or read (and I have written a few, myself)… the cowboy is the lone hero who solves his own (and everybody else’s) problems with direct action (“I have to do this alone, this is my problem!”). But even then, there are two conflicting messages in the story. The cowboy isn’t really doing anything for HIMSELF, he is doing it for the good of others. And even in that mythic representation, the cowboy is only a “trailblazer” for a community to come in and grow, with schools, churches, etc. In real life, a working cowboy might occasionally be assigned to the line shack in winter and face some solitude, but for the most part he was a member of a group of cowboys who “rode for the brand” and were all-for-one, one-for-all.

Let me restate this: Arguing over where the balance is (or should be) between community and individual is an American exercise that dates back to the founding of our country.

But I’ll tell you something I think is NOT American: picking one of those two parts of the equation, community good or individual rights, and saying that is the ONLY thing that matters and the other thing is Un-American and treasonous. America is both of these things at once, and must always be so in order to stay true to the vision it was founded on. There are those –and this has been true for over a century but is especially true now –who say that any talk of the greater good whatsoever is socialism, communism, and treason. FDR’s political opponents called him a communist because of Social Security. People called LBJ a communist because of Medicaid and Medicare. Such people only believe in the rights of the individual –and usually, in my experience, only of individuals very much like themselves. We see it today in the large number of folks who refuse to even consider wearing a mask during a pandemic because of their own discomfort, or just due to the fact they were asked to do something for the public good. It can also be true on the other extreme. The Progressive record of Woodrow Wilson was deeply stained by his administration’s suppression of individual rights during WWI.

So… is America about the public good or the individual? Yes. For that matter, is America about a strong national government or the rights of states? Yes. It is fine to want one of these things not to be overshadowed by the other. But if someone tells you one of these things is patriotic and the other is treason, they lack a clear understanding of what America is. And, more importantly, of what it should be.

Letters condemning a racist mascot

 The following letters to the editor appeared in the Cookeville Herald-Citizen, the first on Feb. 12, 2021 and the second on March 8, 2021.

A Liberal Dose, March 4, 2021 "Understanding the Many Types of Privilege"

 

Know what word scares people nowadays more than any other? “Privilege.” Bring it up and many white people’s eyes glaze over, or they immediately become defensive. “I’ve had to work hard all my life! How dare you imply it was just handed to me!”

I want to walk you through an exercise I do in class to help students really get the concept without feeling attacked.

I have everyone take out a blank sheet of paper, write their name on it, and crumple it into a paper wad. I stand at the front of the room, next to a wastebasket.

“This room is America,” I say, “and this basket is success. Because this is America, everybody gets a shot. When I give the word, everyone take their shot and we’ll see who succeeds. And just to show you how easy it is, I’ll go first.” I simply drop mine in. “Now go!”

Paper wads fly. Only a handful make it in- usually from the people in the front. Someone always says it is unfair. “Stop guilt-tripping the winners!” I say. If someone from near the back makes it, I hold them up. “Why didn’t the rest of you want to succeed the way she did? She proved it can be done if you really want to!”

Then I change my tone. “It really does matter where you start from, doesn’t it? That is privilege. It’s not a guarantee, one way or the other, but it affects the odds.”

I point out there is more than just racial privilege. There is gender, orientation, age, socio-economic, health, even regional. “Everyone in here can probably think of a framework where they’re at the top and one where they’re on the bottom. Think about how it feels to be at the bottom on yours, and realize that’s how other people feel in the ones where you’re on top.”

When you have the privilege, you don’t realize it or feel it. That’s what makes it so hard for people to understand. I ask the students if they can name which of the buildings on campus are easy to use a wheelchair in and which ones aren’t. No one can, because if you’re not in a wheelchair you never once have to even think about something like that. But what is normal for you sure feels different to the student in the wheelchair. You can’t say their feelings on the matter are not valid just because you don’t experience it.

I challenge them all to think about which frameworks they are on top or bottom of. “In the ones where you’re on top”, I say, “reach down and help the person below you. Use your privilege to make a difference… and if everyone does that across the board, we’re all better off.”

I conclude: “There is nothing wrong in getting an education so you can do well. But also get an education so you can do good. That’s what education is for.”

I’m going to use myself as an example of privilege. Now, many of y’all know me. I was born and raised here. If you know me, you know my family was not well-off. Both my parents were raised in real poverty in this county. I myself spent more than twenty years buffing floors before I became an academic. Reaching the middle-class position that I have now required a lot of hard work on my part (and a lot of help along the way). How is that privilege?

Well, on the socio-economic structure, it’s not. But that is not the only structure I have existed on.

When I was a teenager I had black friends who, when we were riding around, refused to go too far up Bon Air Mountain… because it was too close to the Cumberland County line. In those days Crossville was well known as a “sundown town” where black people were in real danger after dark. There was even a crude sign on the highway to that effect at one time. But that didn’t affect me.

When I was 21 and living in New York City, I had a friend named Maurice. One Sunday afternoon, after religious services, we were walking in Manhattan. We were the same age, the same build, and dressed the same (white dress shirts and ties). The only difference was that I was white and he was black. There were two older white ladies walking together a few paces ahead of us.

“Want to see something crazy?” Maurice whispered to me. “Fall back, like you’re not with me, and watch closely.”

I did so, slowing so I was several paces behind Maurice and he was the only one directly behind the white ladies. They very noticeably clutched their purses tighter, and one started talking loudly about her karate classes.

The most profound thing that I experienced in New York City resulted in a racial epiphany for me. I was doing volunteer work alone in a mostly-black neighborhood- I worked in Bedford-Stuy and Crown Heights. Racial tension was high- this was during the time of the infamous “Central Park wilding” incident (for which five innocent youths of color were unjustly imprisoned for years) and just before the riots in Crown Heights.

I was crossing the street when a car full of black teens went by. They were leaning out the window yelling at me for being there- calling me names and saying terrible things. Then they started throwing glass bottles at me (that was before soda bottles were plastic). Glass was exploding at my feet all around me.

It felt terrible –mostly because it was so unfair. I was there trying to help, and they were judging me based solely on my appearance. They were accusing me of things I had not thought or done. They acted like they knew exactly who and what I was, just because of how I looked. I had never experienced that before.

But then, suddenly, it dawned on me. All I had to do to avoid that treatment was go to a different neighborhood. Where could those young men go in America where they would not be treated that way? How must that feel? Is that why they are so angry? And does it help anyone for me to be angry back at them… or might it help, just a little bit, if that tiny taste of such treatment could make me understand what they go through all the time?

Since then I have paid a lot more attention. And now I see it all the time… for example, in the way my senior female colleague is ignored by men when we do presentations while everything I say is listened to, even though I am serving as her assistant. And instead of denying it, or languishing in guilt over it, I look for ways to work against it.

So the next time you hear the word privilege, don’t cringe or get angry. Think about it. Let’s start being honest with ourselves, and start helping each other.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.