WHEN CONSERVATIVE MEANS LIBERAL

Despite polarization, one movement gathers bi-partisan support: “food freedom,” (loosening  regulations when sales are between local producers/ buyers.)    “Conservatives” resist regulatory overload, so they are on board.  “Liberals” support local farmers, so they are in.  

It could go otherwise. “Conservatives” tend to favor free markets, which, in practice, privilege big companies.  “Liberals” think kindly of regulations. Yet, when it comes to food freedom, conservatives side with the little guy and liberals willingly waive regulations.

Strange, especially if we only attend to journalistic shorthand. There, “conservative” and “liberal” become purified incompatibles.  Historically/philosophically, the labels are mongrels. 

One attempt to sort things out:

LIBERAL. The archetypes are the  “classical liberals¨ from 17th/18th centuries (prototypical: John Locke 1632-1704). They were (a) reformers; (b) their aim was emancipatory; (c) their notion of human nature was

individualistic; (d) they invented a story of an aboriginal condition (“state of nature”) in which humans were freedom-possessing individuals; (e) some of these freedoms had to be willingly given up because of life with others; (f)  rights were only given up within contracts entered into by rational, informed individuals. Outside of contracts there were no obligations. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) said it clearly: any obligation upon an individual arises, solely, “from some act of his own.” 

The major freedom-constricting agents in the 17th

century  were aristocrats. Liberal reform sought removal of artificial aristocratic constraints. That way, with a resultant minimal state, the  bourgeois (urban, business-oriented) class, could flourish. By the 19th century, classical liberalism (aka “free market capitalism”) had (1) been adopted by the commercial class; (2) this class was now on the ascendance; (3) it was creating a new underclass of

impoverished, overworked laborers; (4) publicly elected officials could not intervene in the economic sphere, a sphere that was part of liberalism’s pre-political realm outside the purview of legitimate state intervention 

At this point, the reformist  dimension of “liberalism” parted ways with its 18th century programmatic dimension. Emancipation remained the aim. The enemies of freedom had changed. “Liberal” still meant “reformer,” but now reform challenged the “laissez-faire” status quo the older liberalism had championed. The minimal state, once a liberal ideal, came to be seen as a  limit on the freedom of laborers.

The result is what we have today: “liberals” with roots in classical liberalism, but supporting policies at odds with the program of classical liberalism.

CONSERVATIVE.  20th century “liberal” reformers faced opposition.  Defenders of the status quo were “conservatives.” Ironically, what they sought to

conserve was classical liberalism. The result was a linguistic jumble:  those seeking to preserve liberalism were called “conservatives.” “Liberals," by contrast wished to overturn liberalism. It’s a lot less complicated in some European countries where “liberal” still means supporter of free market capitalism.

Things get even more convoluted.  “Conservatism" did not always mean “defender of free enterprise.”  Capitalism is a great engine of change. Preserving the ancient ways is not high on its priority list. It dismisses traditional virtues and imposes a single value: profit.  

A more old-fashioned conservatism predates classical liberalism. Some contrasts: (a) For liberals, humans are essentially individuals. For traditionalist conservatives, humans, as Aristotle long ago insisted, are social

animals. (b) Liberals tend to be rationalists. Conservatives  don’t dismiss intelligence, but rather insist on exercising it in conjunction with experience and tradition. (c) Liberals are reluctant to embrace substantive values, arguing that people should be free to live the lives they wish. Conservatives accept that some modes of living are simply more conducive to a fulfilling human life than others.  (d) Liberals, in their reformist zeal, consider human nature as infinitely malleable. Conservatives worry about “utopian” plans

conceived without concern for experience, customs, cultural practices, realities of the human condition. (e) Liberals only accept obligations that issue from contracts. Conservatives believe that our naturally embedded situatedness occasions responsibilities and obligations.   Infants, for example, cannot, by definition, be parties to a contract. Yet parents, without such a contract, can be said to have obligations to their children. The same can be said for animals and the natural world.   

America, born in the 18th century, was imprinted by classical liberal ideas.  That is why economic conservatism converges with the older liberalism. The philosophical challenge for the 21st century is that of articulating a more biologically and historically defensible understanding of the human condition. What would this mean? Moving beyond notions that became sedimented in the 19th century:  individualism, the state of nature fantasy, the notion that humans are, by nature, only selfish, that life is a struggle for existence. Within the new context, liberalism and conservatism would continue, but be redefined. What would not change, as we shall see in the next post--the constant temptation toward angelism.