I think in a country founded, however imperfectly, on liberal values which is, on the balance, substantially more liberal than most countries, it is possible to have a sort of 'liberal conservatism' which is suspicious of change but nevertheless affirms the liberal values of a free society.
That basically describes Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicanism. The last elected politician to fall under that category was probably Arlen Specter, and he had to switch to the Democratic Party at the end of his career.
This basically sounds like the old strain known as Rockefeller Republicans.
If that's the case why not use cautious-liberals or pragmatic-liberals instead of including those that are hostile to liberal values? I think the problem with liberal conservatives is that its a contradiction in terms, what values are going to win out when push comes to shove, tradition or liberty?
i agree with you in general but i think we're also down the rabbit hole of the Labeling Trap™ where we're concerned more about whether a concept matches a preexisting label than we are about the details of the concept 1/
[spitballing from here on out] it occurs to me just now that people being "resistant to change" (or "cautious" as you put it) is also vague. i'm resistant to some kinds of change because those changes are obviously bad and wrong. i'm perfectly happy with other kinds of change. 2/
the changes "progressives" want are typically changes in power structures so that fewer (or ideally no) people are oppressed. people who resist such changes value hierarchy and domination. if "conservative" means "adherent to Wilhoit's Law" then yeah, you can't have liberal conservatives... 3/
...because liberalism is inherently cooperation-based and conservatism is inherently domination-based, and those are incompatible. for a while we had conservatives wrapped in some amount of liberalism, but as you say, when push came to shove, they chose domination. end/
other than some of them, who chose freedom, again, mostly the never-trumpers in an american context, but also i’d include right-wing market liberal reformers in post-soviet states, or italian monarchists fighting in the partisan movement against the fascists
notably i think liberal conservatism gets its coherence, as Bret says, from having an authoritarian enemy to define itself against, an actual, red-line choice between domination and cooperation, because when the choice is purely theoretical it’s very easy to make exception after exception to freedom
I think the incompatibility between the two is that Conservatism worship of tradition means it cannot stomach the inevitable culture tides and changes that liberalism allows. Eventually conservatives will seek the coercive power to prevent change and that means destroying liberty.
Generally speaking, I break up current ideologies as: 1) Progressives believe in shaping institutions to produce positive change 2) Liberals believe individual liberty is a high (or highest) value 3) Conservatives are skeptical of (1) 4) Reactionaries want to return to an imagined past.
5) Authoritarians want the warm embrace of an all-decided, all-controlling state and to wield it against their enemies. You can obviously have authoritarian-progressives (those are your Maoist/Stalinist communists) and liberal-progressives (social democrats, democrats).
Equally, you can have both conservative-authoritarians and reactionary-authoritarians, but conservative-liberal is, in fact, an ideology that functions and they exist, in limited numbers (again, they're NeverTrumpers).
The incompatibilities between those labels exist but are limited: progressive, conservative and reactionary are mutually exclusive, as are liberal and authoritarian. I suppose a liberal-reactionary could be possible, but maybe no? - liberalism demands at least some willingness to allow some change.
I consider myself a conservative and I’ve always opposed Trump on those principles — I think that at least the way I understand it, it involves a sort of pessimism about human nature and the power of governmental institutions to guide human affairs. Of course, the idea of “restoring” …
But I find efforts to declare that there are no liberal-conservatives - ideologically liberal-but-skeptical-of-change types - frustrating, because, like, I know a bunch. They have two big mastheads! Many walked away from lucrative jobs over their sincere liberalism, while remaining conservative.
In Canada we had so-called "Red Tories", who were part of the weirdly named Progressive-Conservative Party (the name came from a merger in the '30s when "progressive" meant "for progress", more-or-less). Red Tories wanted positive social change (women's rights, gay rights, etc) while maintaining...
I'd think something like conservative-progressive would be possible, say if someone wanted to shape institutions to improve people's lives but believed in keeping the interventions careful and evidence-based.
an eminently reasonable taxonomic starting point, but [deep breath, 8000 word rant]
I think conservativism needs to have a positive definition, not merely skeptical of change or progressivism. The less hostile definition I like is that conservativism believes that some people are more capable than others, and society is better off when those people have more power and privilege.
That definition is coherent with both reactionary conservativism that sees men/white/rich people as more capable, and a liberal conservativism that sees capability as something proven through fair competition.
My personal take is that most conservatives see themselves as the latter, but in practice see the signifiers of capability from traditional society, being rich/white/male, as creating capability and therefore are "skeptical" of change that opens capability to a wider and different looking group.
So 'natural hierarchy' is, I'd argue, the ideology of your authoritarian conservatives and reactionaries. By contrast, your liberal conservatives instead get to a conservative stand ideologically via what Thomas Sowell termed the 'constrained vision.'
It's a sort of 'Chesteron's Fence' conservatism that wants to be careful about reforms, but is willing to enact reforms that are proved to have a high likelihood of enhancing liberty or improving wellbeing without injury to liberty. That form can exist and does exist, but it is not MAGA.
A hesitance to enact reforms paired with a willingness (at least ostensibly) to enact well justified ones is *centrism*, not conservatism. Conservatism is a desire to prevent / roll back reforms, and this is the natural outcome of pursuing that even after losing the battle to prevent change.
I disagree here. 'Centrism,' I see, as an ideology of consensus and compromise, regardless of the ideological coherence of either. Meanwhile 'roll back' reforms is not conservatives, but reactionaries, a distinction that matters.
I think you're focusing on political behaviors, in which respect yes, the positions you're describing are different. But when interrogating party transitions, I think that's less useful than focusing on how political ideologies behave in different contexts.
What I'm describing as centrism can be incoherently focused on finding a middle ground, especially in the current context. But in a different context with broad political cohesion and functioningly moderate parties, it looks like hesitance and possible acceptance of light reforms.
What I'm describing as conservatism often looks like hesitant resistance to reforms in the same context, because often an most effective way to resist change. But once that change has happened it becomes reactionary, because that's what's required to roll reforms back.
And I think you are taking some conservatives at their word when they protest that this isn't the inevitable reaction of conservative parties which fail to prevent change. They say they were just legitimately hesitant about radical reform, and all this chaos is evidence they were right to do so.
But that's a convenient mask, and only believable if you don't belong to a demographic that was under their bootheel during that period. "Liberal conservatives" have *always* embraced authoritarian methods of controlling and suppressing minorities and leftist change, they just didn't have to upend
democratic society to hold the power to do so. They are asking you to believe that there has been a deep ideological change in the Republican Party which just isn't true, because it's the only way to justify inviting non-Trumpian conservatives back to the table after all this.
But there hasn't been. I really do think that the Republican Party ideology hasn't meaningfully changed, only the context of what is required for them to pursue it. And I think we can understand the historical behavior of liberal conservatives much better in that context.
Not sure that works because the reforms are radically faster than a human lifetime now. If you are conservative to the values of the 80s then you will oppose gsy marriage and be sceptical about interracial marriage. The Status quo goal for conservatives does not change as fast as the Status quo.
But not one that conservatives can hold to because they aren't going to suddenly end up okay with a new status quo when progress happens. They want the status quo of their past, and that means reaction.
Exactly. Conservatives will ask you to believe that they are resisting change out of hesitance because it implies a more reasonable response to those changes happening anyway. But that's just not how it has ever worked in practice.
That said, this sort of 'liberal conservatism' really only finds expression in opposition to radical authoritarianism, which is why, I think, it was relatively more prominent during WWII and the Cold War, when there were obvious right- and left-authoritarian models that attacked liberty.
I'd suggest you see a resurgence of this kind of 'liberal-conservatism' among what remains of the NeverTrumpers: both the Bulwark and Dispatch crowd, annoyed by the radicalism of the farther left, but also far more alarmed and angered by the authoritarian radicalism of MAGA.
one problem that I have with the 'Never-Trump'ers is that they have yet to repudiate the reactionary bigotry and conspiracy theories of the neo-Confederates, allowing what used to be the 'John Birch Society' to morph into MAGA
also there’s a sense in which all of the progressives now calling for a return to civic virtue espousing traditionally conservative positions: there is a correct standard of behavior, a proper way of doing things, that people must be held to for the good of the community.
this is a common joke among the liberal currents folks, recognizing the kind of irony of how more and more of us progressives start to sound like old-fashioned small-c civic conservatives because we're reacting to such open evil and moral degradation
After 2016, I observed: when reactionaries are ascendant, the progressives become conservatives, to preserve their gains.
like i legit know more than one progressive that's started going to church (UU or open liberal nondenom sects) this year, and not out of newfound religiosity
FWIW, as a European I feel the US-progressive debate about convervatism sorely lacks examples from beyond their own borders. No broad political movement is without sin, but many Republican sins are particularly American. E.g. for all her faults, Merkel's convervatism couldn't be less like MAGA.
I am not sure Merkle is a conservative in a german context anymore. And looking at the trajectory of german politics since her...nah, this works.
This seems true, though it’s sad they are so few. Short of a universally recognized disaster (which I’m not ruling out given gross incompetence) it’s hard to see how those guys can become the core of moral conservatism. Maybe best case is dems becoming big tent that dominates 55-60% of electorate?
i suppose that "l-c" idea manifests as people who identify as conservative but cannot be frightened into supporting illiberal forms of governance. [conjecture] US conservatives in the post-WW2 era were mostly pro-liberal, but applying neoliberalism to them for 40+ years made them mostly anti-liberal
I think the brainrot of Fox News needing to present a vision of the world that justified voting deep red even when GOP policies were not succeeding played a big role in it.
On some level, I think personalities are just naturally either excited by or worried by change and I don't think the slice of people in either group changes very much. A healthy politics is when the first group is excited by pro-freedom change and the latter group worried by anti-freedom change.
Yes, though the latter group will also naturally be scared by trying to right lacking Implementation of liberal values.
Right liberal conservatives are just Dems, now, Generally. We just don't have political language in this country for such a thing as in the US 'liberal' means something more specific as, until quite recently, all actors in US politics were politely assumed to be liberals in the classical sense.
Which itself was not true, as it's difficult to call a segregationist classically liberal, but whatevs.
It's possible, sure, but does it have any actual traction over the decades-long flood of shit that modern conservatism has become?