Two recent discussions, one by the “conservative” Gary Becker (brought to my attention by Economist’s View) and the other by the “liberal” Alan Wolfe (which I saw at Cafe Hayek) BOTH seem confused about their own political creeds. This is apparently because of the peculiar way the US political system deals with people who like individual liberty. Becker claims them for the “conservatives” and Wolfe’s “liberals” are happy to get rid of them.
One good thing about being a development person is that you travel the world and get to talk politics with a bunch of different nationals. You realize the global definition of liberal and conservative is different than the American one and a lot more commonsensical. So commonsensical that even dictionary.com gets it mostly right: A Liberal is “favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.” A Conservative is “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.” So, for example, Conservatives in Latin America are associated with the old-guard Catholic Church and in Islamic countries with traditional sexual mores and roles for women. Liberals in both places are more enthusiastic about more recent religious practices and sexual and gender norms.
Neither definition says anything about individual liberty. Liberals could violate liberty in their eagerness to change things that individuals DON’T want to change, and conservatives could violate the liberty of individuals who DO want to change.
So Becker (of whom I am otherwise a big fan) faults conservatives for – being conservative. They and Miss California are not flexible enough on “gays in the military, gay marriage, abortions, cell stem research.” Yes, that’s what happens when you prefer – as Conservatives always do — state-enforced tradition to values that the current generation of individuals might freely choose.
Wolfe says that liberty-loving Hayek would “seek to straighten out the crooked timber of humanity by forcing everyone into a mold established by the market.” To Hayek, who wrote an article called “Why I am not a conservative,” the “market” was just one of many arenas where individuals were free to choose, sometimes overturning tradition, other times choosing to stick with tradition, and in yet other cases making gradual progressive changes. So Wolfe’s statement is logically nonsensical, something like “Hayek would force everyone into a mold where they could be whatever they want.”
14 Comments
There are 2 different definitions of liberalism namely, classical liberalism and social liberalism. The former is a term used by economists like Gary Becker while the later is a political term.
In modern politics, liberals are more associated with neo-Keysian economics and government intervention while conservatives tend to be more closely in associated with ideas of classical liberalism such as limited government, free trade, and laissez-faire in markets.
Labels are useful to simplify and categorize our reality just as we use symbols to express concepts in math. How can a label convey the depth, complexity, and diversity of human thought?
There is another dimension, which one can view more as means rather than as ends.
Generally “conservatives” favor a hierarchical social structure with strong leaders and weak followers. This has also been the norm for much of history. Royalty went so far as to get themselves declared “divine” in various cultures to further cement their legitimacy.
The Enlightenment brought about the first systematic philosophical opposition to this view, by declaring that “all men are equal” and, therefore, capable of running their own affairs. The democratic governance that followed this was the first large-scale instance of self-rule in human history. Prior examples restricted the citizenry to select groups. This is still a work in progress as many cultures continue to have disfavored sectors – especially concerning women and ethnic minorities.
Since this is a relatively new view of society those that espouse it cannot use historical precedent as a justification for their positions and are, per force, “progressive” and in favor of change.
Both George Lakoff and Robert Altemeyer have written about the psychological underpinnings of this dichotomy. Lakoff in terms of “framing” and Altemeyer in terms of the “Right Wing Authoritarian” personality type.
It seems from their research (and others) that there really are different psychological types and they tend to gravitate towards one view of society or the other.
Robert,
With all due respect, I read Dr. Altemeyer’s book, The Authoritarians. If one is considering such theories, one should also consider their historical context and alternate views as well as applying some basic critical thinking.
One should, for example, look at methodology and whether the questionaires are designed to favor one respondent over another which is clearly the case with sample questionaires detailed in Dr. Altemeyer’s book. One should also consider the methodology of candidate selection and the sample size. Psychology experimentation is usually carried out with university students as the subjects. There are numerous studies that indicate that students are more polarized in their views than the general public.
Psychological studies and typing are quite limited. Dr. Altemeyer however, extrapolates such studies to make sweeping historical, social and political generalizations without acknowledging any such limitations. How can anyone discuss the religious belief in the U.S. without discussing the Great Awakening? Frankly, the conclusions go way beyond what one might reasonably infer from such data. Having read extensively on other psychological types, I have not encountered any other psychologist or psychiatrist who extrapolates his/her data to such an untenable degree.
The spider sense particularly tingles when Altmeyer argues that we should accept his conclusions on the basis that he is an fair-minded, unbiased individual that can be trusted.
The science should be evaluated on its merits rather than the intrisic niceness of the scientist. Would Einstein have argued The Theory of Relativity on the basis that he was a nice person?
The style of writing tends to be colloquial rather than scientific
and little information is given about the underlying studies, their size, selection criteria, controls to prevent bias, or statistical methods used to smooth the data. One thing I did learn in university is to test information for bias and accuracy. Unfortunately, Dr. Altemeyer’s book does hold up well under such scrutiny.
One cannot help but observe that you seem to accept Dr. Altemeyer’s authority and theories without few questions. Aren’t these the hallmarks of the authoritarian type?
With regard to history, the Enlightenment also brought us John Locke and Adam Smith both proponents of classical Liberalism usually associated with the “conservative” element of the modern political spectrum.
These labels of liberal/conservative, right/left are very limited in their value. Richard Nixon introduced wage and price controls (famously saying “We are all Keynesians now”) while Bill Clinton is best known for welfare entitlement reform and NAFTA. Our opinions of public policy, international politics, economics, etc. seem to evolve largely reflecting our personal experiences and the historical context of the times. Ideas either resonate with us and respond to the needs of our times, or they do not.
It has been said that politics is the art of the possible reflecting its nature of consensus building, compromise and negotiation. Very few politicians are righid ideologues; most successful politicians are pragmatists and excellent negotiators like Bill Clinton who work to hammer out workable solutions to problems while an ideologue finds it difficult to concede or compromise.
Re: robertdfeinman
Mr. Feinman’s definition of conservative may be valid in some parts of the world but it is in no way what American conservatives believe. American conservatives believe in the most radical application of individual freedoms, undergirded by the individual rights to life, liberty and property, that is consistent with an orderly and lawful society. Have you never noticed how headstrong individual conservatives are and that they are always butting heads with each other? That is not the behavior of authoritarian persons but of extreme individualists. Compare if you will to Democrats, who all follow the party line to the letter and treat those who stray from their consensus with intense abuse. If Altermeyer’s observations ever had any merit, which I doubt, it would have been in reference to the old “progressive” Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and his proto-fascist ilk. These days the progressives are all in the Democrat fold, and the Dems are welcome to keep them.
More broadly, the “world” definition of conservative and liberal are not applicable to the understanding of American conservatives. American conservatives see “liberalism” as classical liberalism along free-market or libertarian lines, and “conservatism” as adherence to the principles of America’s founding. Likewise, conservatives see Democrats as belonging to the American progressive tradition and very much akin to the world totalitarian socialist strain.
I’ll leave it up to Altemeyer to defend himself. You can post your remarks on his web site and see what he says. However I doubt you read his book very closely.
He specifically has stated that his conclusions only relate to North Americans of the present era. He makes no extrapolations to other times or places. Furthermore the questionnaire he shows in his book is only representative of those that he used over his 40 years of study. It was not intended to create a psychological profile of an individual, but was used with other tests to make connections about populations in general.
He also makes no claims about libertarians or “liberal” authoritarians because he has stated that he didn’t have a large enough sample size since they are so rare in the general population.
You can associate his work with those who have studied the “social dominant organization” type of personality as well to see where movement leaders tend to fall in the spectrum. He did not study this type explicitly either.
Several sites are now discussing the latest rant by Posner on his own website where he disowns modern “conservativism”. I see this as a perfect example of the disconnect between libertarians and social conservatives.
If it makes you happy to put labels on things (especially extinct philosophical movements), feel free, but I don’t know what is to be gained. The important point is that the alliance between libertarians, social conservatives and big business is falling apart and the recriminations are getting more heated.
This is an opportunity for new ideas to appear and open discussions of alternative social policies to emerge. The policies of the 19th Century really need to be finally put to bed. We are entering an era of over population and resource limits and the old ideas are not adequate to deal with such a world.
I gave my own opinion of what “left” and “right” signify here, which avoids “No true Scotsman” scenarios. Ideology is partly heritable, so it could be ingrained personality types or also just what group’s you identify with and whose status you want to raise or lower.
The Enlightenment is old and has become the status quo (and is indeed supported as traditional both in today’s argument from the authority of the “founding fathers” and the founders talk of traditional english liberties). Supporters of monarchy or a Pope with more divisions than Stalin had to contend with would not be conservative, but radical.
David Friedman criticizes Altemeyer’s surveys here, as he stacks the deck toward different desired correlations in the U.S and Russia. Friedman isn’t in the same field as Altemeyer, but Chris of Mixing Memory is a cognitive scientist like Lakoff and has a number of posts tweaking him, though his review of The Political Mind seems to be on permanent hiatus.
Sorry guys, but conservatives and classical liberals are entirely different beasts. Every Republican president over the past quarter century has gone on a massive spending spree, leaving the U.S. with a growing national debt. Just because the Democratic Party is a big government party doesn’t make the Republican Party a small government one. They are both big government parties.
In the U.S. today, we’ve got conservatives arguing FOR torture, FOR government spying on U.S. citizens, FOR military intervention abroad, AGAINST personal privacy, AGAINST gay marriage, FOR the prohibition of drugs, FOR government-mandated religious education, etc. Try comparing these positions with those of the Cato Institute or the Libertarian Party and you will see that conservatives and classical liberals disagree on all of them. All of these conservative positions are in opposition to individual liberty and smaller government.
Conservatives hate the American Civil Liberties Union because it fights FOR greater individual liberty and AGAINST government power. Compare this with the libertarian Cato Institute which sides with the ACLU very, very often.
The only classical liberal in the Republican Party is Ron Paul. He didn’t get anywhere in the Republican primary because most conservatives hate the freedom he fights for.
Robert,
I can assure you that I did read Dr. Altemeyer’s book apparently, a bit more closely than you. Actually, I wanted to try to understand where you were coming from which is why I bothered to read the book. I was frankly very disturbed by the prejudicial nature of this book which borders on propaganda.
You have suggested “new ideas” and resurrect a bunch of chesnuts from the 1960’s, namely, those from The Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth and the Population Bomb by noted entomologist and butterfly specialist, Paul Ehrlich. The idea of limits was throughly upended by Julian Simon while Norman Borlaug, Nobel lauret was among the leaders in the Green Revolution in agriculture. You might wish to read The Man Who Fed Millions, a biography of Dr. Borlaug whose tireless work on crop breeding and plant pathology has ensured that the world can feed its population. Some folks carp about problems and some folks get the job done!
The problem with the idea of limits is that it does not adequately factor in changes in technology. Quite simply, the way resources are used changes through time ie. we don’t use whale oil and candles anymore. This interview with Paul Romer presents a more 3-dimensional view of scarcity which doubtless you will ignore since it does not align with your preconceived notions.
James,
I could not agree more. The Republicans are not conservatives anymore than Elizabeth Taylor is a virgin.
The reality of politics is that there are political fringes like Ron Paul or moveon.org but the majority of citizens are in the centre. Anyone wishing to gain electoral success has to have broad based popular support like Clinton or Obama. In Bush’s case, Americans were very concerned about terrorism after 911 and he seemed to provide stronger leadership on this particularly as the Kerry plan did not look very different from the Bush plan.
The labels (liberal and conservative) in American politics long ago served to limit useful discussion of more subtle ideas or political discourse between members who self identify with them. One should seek to be considered thoughtful or considered in action rather than liberal or conservative as these are now the labels of parties agendas and issues rather than political schools of thought. The use of L/C labels as party brands long ago robbed them in the American dialogue of any interesting meaning.
Nick,
Well said.
Robert,
If you insist upon proselytizing about the work of Dr. Altemeyer as you have done repeatedly, you can’t just pass the buck to Dr. A when someone challenges these ideas. Funnily, your willingness to believe that anyone who holds religious or conservative ideas is either a member of a vast right wing conspiracy or a mindless zombie reminds me of a quotation by the late William F. Buckley.
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
QT:
You keep imputing motives and positions to me. This is using ad hominem argument and is (usually) a sign of a poorly formulated position.
If you don’t like my take on things than you have to counter the arguments not the person making them.
To make it easy, I’ll state my points (again).
1. Easterly (remember him?) makes a point that various political positions in the US are not representative of thinking elsewhere. This seems fairly obvious, the blindness of Americans as to what is happening elsewhere is well-known.
2. I stated that there seems to be a correlation between views of the proper form of social organization and certain types of psychological makeups. I cited Altemeyer as one who has studied this. I also cited the work of those who deal with “social dominance organization” although I didn’t provide links. Altemeyer aside, this work can be traced back to Adorno and Arendt among others, so there is plenty of other material, if one wishes to read it. My point is that to the extent there is a correlation between personality and political philosophy getting such people to change their views is unlikely to succeed.
3. As an aside I mentioned the need to adapt to a finite planet. There is plenty of research on this as well, starting with Herman Daly and extending through many others. There are two arguments that are popular to counter their points, you offer both. The first is of the type that Malthus was wrong. The second is that technology will find a way.
Both argue by historical analogy, this is not a valid approach. The levees in New Orleans were deemed safe by historical analogy. This turned out to be false. That Malthus’s or Erlich’s predictions were premature proves nothing. We have 6.7 billion people now, not less than the one billion in Malthus’s era.
The green revolution was a boon and was mostly unanticipated, but this does not prove that there will be similar discoveries of sufficient magnitude in the future. Depending upon this is just wishful thinking, not science.
There will be another 3 billion people by mid century, if you don’t think this makes an unprecedented differenced than you are free to believe as you wish. Prudence, however, demands that steps be taken to plan for the worst case, not the best, if disaster is to be minimized.
Wishing won’t make it so. Sorry…
Robert,
I agree that you have said that one cannot argue with a RWA but Altemeyer goes a little further than that claiming that social conservatives are a threat to U.S. democracy.
Considering that evangelical faith has dominated U.S. religious belief for a considerable period of time, if Altemeyer was right, how would an American democracy still exist? To claim as Altemeyer does that evangelical christians were not organized before now, is historical inaccurate. One can point to 2 examples, the underground railway and the American Revolution where religious christians organized against the British.
In Ch.7, Altemeyer compares the religious right in the U.S. to the Nazis in Germany. One can hardly compare evangelical christians to fascist mass murderers. I find this suggestion offensive and I am an atheist.
The Authoritarians summarizes experimental findings by description but does not present the actual data. Without looking at the actual results, one has no idea whether the findings are being fairly characterized or whether you are merely being told something that is a load of wally.
Any reader should be looking up the footnotes before they swallow the bait.
If one does not listen, understand or respect others, is it any wonder that they are not responsive to one’s ideas?
I believe there is more to be learned from How to Win Friends and Influence People, Commanding Heights (which puts the 2 dominant economic views of the 20th century into historical context), or Getting to Yes produced by the Harvard Negotiating Project.
I believe that we can agree that there is a challenge to continue to feed the world’s population particularly as 3 crops dominate the world food supply. Threats such as the U99 wheatrust are of particular concern given their potential to go global. The benefits of the green revolution never made it to Africa and there is a great deal that can be improved here. I am more hopeful that we can continue to produce new crops and agricultural technologies. The use of genetic marker technology (non-GMO) has accelerated the development of new crops as even Borlaug could not have imagined.
Dear Mr. Easterly:
I read your comments on the dictionary definitions of conservative and liberal with interest.
I would listen to discussions in my family when I was a kid forty years ago. My uncle was the only “conservative” voice in my family and I admired his courage as he was completely outnumbered.
But I had always been indoctrinated and misled into the traditional definitions of ‘conservative’ as being reactionary, and ‘liberal’ as being progressive. These family ‘discussions’ exposed me to alternative points of view, and I was startled to observe that what was considered ‘conservative’ were the most radical and sometimes revolutionary ideas around at the time. “The ‘liberal’ agenda seemed to promote the status quo by comparison.
The ideas of Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and other free market economists were nothing short of radical at that time. That these were ever considered as originating from a ‘conservative’ mind set was just a misnomer.
Those ideas that support and empower ability, responsibility and individual liberty ought, by all reason, be a definition of progressive. Those ideas that tend to encourage dependence, discourage initiative, and really help make people less able would seem to me to be old-school reactionary.
These are 1984 type re-definition of words.
Just one person’s point of view.
Best,
Scott Sorensen
Los Angeles, CA
Wolfe’s liberals don’t want to get rid of liberty lovers.