“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 21st 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 18th 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.
Well said!
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