The sad story of liberalism
Carson Jerema, Staff
Politicians and pundits say a lot of things to make a point, but more often than not, they are simply spewing meaningless jargon. The most obvious example, I would argue, is the egregious misuse of the term liberal, which is used in the U.S. to insult everyone from moderate Republicans to Ralph Nader. While I do not intend to be facetious, it would appear that the term liberal is used a little too liberally.
It may come as a surprise to those who watch too much American television, but the term does not always denote someone hell-bent on installing a Cuban-style government on the entire world. For instance, the European left uses the term to describe the political right, what North Americans would refer to as conservative.
While the word is misused in most countries — including Canada where the term usually refers to the Liberal party — it is the evolution of its meaning in the United States that has generated the most confusion.
Paranoid American politicians and overpaid analysts use the term liberal as a kind of fear-mongering tactic. Think of George Bush’s attempt to discredit presidential candidate John Kerry by labeling him “the fourth-most liberal senator.”
Now I do not contend to have all the answers, but I think it would be useful and even necessary if people actually understood what “liberal” means. The connotations may be confusing and often contradictory, but hey — who says politicians and commentators should make sense?
A word gone bad
Classical liberalism, simply put, emphasizes individual liberty. Liberty is best served, it is argued, with a minimal government that only seeks to provide security from harm, protection of property rights and other individual liberties, such as freedom in the market place and the right to speak and worship freely.
Somewhere towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a split occurred within liberalism.
The two schools were based on different concepts of liberty: positive and negative. Negative liberty refers simply to the absence of restraints. Those promoting the negative form of liberalism tend to emphasize freedom in the market place, lower levels of taxation and for the most part are in line with classical liberalism. This group is often referred to as “neoliberal.”
Positive liberalism, better known as welfare liberalism or welfare-state liberalism, also emphasizes individual freedoms but it diverges with neoliberalism on the best way to achieve individual liberty. Like neoliberals, welfare liberals stress equality of opportunity and not equality of condition, as socialists do. They argue that the government should intervene in society to ensure that individuals can maximize their potential.
For example, if a child is born into poverty he/she, welfare liberals argue, cannot be truly free. To help the child to be truly free and achieve his/her potential, the government should intervene to do such things as raise levels of taxation and redistribute wealth.
Over time, welfare liberals became known, at least in the U.S., simply as liberals. While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when this change occurred, it is believed to be the result of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression, which formed the basis for the modern welfare state. Roosevelt adopted the term liberal to avoid being labeled left wing. As we now know, his philosophical successors have not been so lucky.
Further puzzling the use of the term is how conservatism has come to be understood. Conservatism has been the blanket label to denote the political right. But being conservative simply means to conserve what already exists. Since the U. S. was founded on the principles of classical liberalism, modern American liberals (neoliberals) are often called conservative.
But conservatism also refers to economic protectionism (the opposite of liberalism), as well as religious and cultural conservatism, also at odds with liberalism. Slapping someone with the label conservative is nearly as derogatory and futile as the epithet liberal.
The matter is confused further with the rise of neoconservatism in the early 1980s. Neoconservatism can be defined simply, though not exhaustively, as the combination of social and political conservatism with economic neoliberalism.
While I am certain that it would make simple minded politicians cringe, the abuse of the word has made it possible for virtually anyone, even liberalism’s most vicious opponents, to be branded a flag waving liberal of one stripe or another.
A losing battle
Defenders of classical liberalism have, from time to time, argued for the rightful return of their word, so that it is used to refer to all forms of individual liberty. In his Capitalism and Freedom, published in 1962, Milton Friedman complained about the adaptation of the word by the architects of the welfare state. He also derided “conservative” as being an inadequate alternative because of the uncertainty regarding that word.
More recently, The Economist expressed its discontent with European liberals who emphasize economic liberty but downplay other forms of individual freedom, as well as American liberals who downplay economic liberalism.
Unfortunately for The Economist, it is unlikely that a political party will adopt policies closely aligned with the original intent of the word. But at the very least, if it is recognized that slinging around the term liberal has become nothing more than partisan hackery, those who claim to have a monopoly on the political truth may be forced to actually form arguments. But then again, this would require the freezing over of the sun.
Carson Jerema is a fourth-year political studies student and the Manitoban’s Comment Editor.
