It seems these days as though everybody has been shoved into one of two camps: liberal or conservative. That division is both unfortunate and inaccurate, but they are the boxes news media have put us in. I want to look at three different ways of being conservative. They are not mutually exclusive, but they do have their own identities. That may lessen the perceived gulf of unbridgeable division.
First, let’s be clear: MAGA and its fellow travelers do not represent a conservative movement. They are retrograde fascists and that’s all there is to it. There comes a point when excuses have to stop being made for them and that point has long since been reached.
Conservatives generally fall into three overlapping categories often blended together in the lives of individuals—including not a few who identify as liberal.
Social conservatives are comfortable with the social standards they grew up with which they see as defining what a well-ordered society should look like. While issues of human sexuality have been the most visible battleground, social conservatism is really about a much broader range of “normative” expectations for human behavior and society in general. It tends to be suspicious, cautious, and even fearful of social change that seems disruptive to order. Social conservatives take a long time—sometimes a generation or two—to adjust to changing conditions but eventually they adapt.
Fiscal conservatives want assurance that the nation’s financial condition is secure and predictable. They worry about overspending and excessive debt. While media attention focuses on the federal government, fiscal conservatives are equally concerned about state, local, and even personal finances. Like social conservatives, they are most comfortable with what they learned in their youth about financial responsibility and are uneasy with rapid technological and economic changes that force new ways of thinking. They are suspicious of public spending that seems like “throwing money” at problems with no clear plan. They are quick to see benefits for particular interests from spending but slower to recognize how it might serve the common good.
Pragmatic political conservatives want government at every level to be efficient and effective in using the resources entrusted to it. They are willing to provide what is necessary but no more than that. They dislike the federal government stepping into what used to be local or regional issues even as modern communications and technology have erased the boundaries that once confined them. They want legislatures to be serious, deliberate, and accountable in their work with nothing done without a workable plan.
What’s curious is that these three conservative tendencies are also present in the thinking of many people who consider themselves liberal. That’s not so hard to understand. One reason cohesion among liberals is elusive is that these conservative instincts within liberal thought challenge every idea and candidate to prove themselves in the public arena of competing interests.
I believe most Americans are, in fact, conservative liberals or liberal conservatives. Whether they register as Republicans or Democrats is another matter. Broadly speaking, most Republicans today could be described as liberal conservatives, while most Democrats could be described as conservative liberals. Call it center-right and center-left if you prefer.
And what of the much-heralded extremes? MAGA is the most obvious example of a destructive extreme. Hard-core libertarians are nearby, though they remain committed to a republican democracy—as they interpret it. On the far left, despite what Stephen Miller and others like to claim, there are no massed ranks of communists. Yes, there are left-wing extremists, but they number in the dozens or perhaps hundreds—not the thousands or millions—and as a political force they are insignificant. Their shadow looms almost entirely because MAGA propaganda insists on making it so.
So where does that leave us? The way I see it, candidates for public office who want to restore electoral integrity to the nation and protect our liberal democracy must be anchored in several core messages: use every resource of the government to influence housing affordable to people well below median income levels; advocate for measures that will help reduce the cost of daily living for ordinary people; demand tax increases on the ultra wealthy and eliminate corporate socialism; endorse consumer protection measures; raise and index the minimum wage; and restore fair and open global trading relationships.
There may be several others that come to your mind but I think these at least must be at the core. Other very important issues, especially those regarding civil and human rights and the protection of the environment cannot be ignored. But they cannot be at the core of campaigns. First, and by far most important, we must restore the integrity and stability of liberal republican democracy and a presidency of limited power as it was intended to be and always has been until the Trump era.