What It Means To Be A Liberal

UNIVERSITY of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone laments that the word “liberal” has become a pejorative in the 38 years since Richard Nixon was elected president. And he thinks that is a shame. Proud of being a liberal, he has published “What it means to be a liberal” in the Chicago Tribune for all to read and reflect upon.

We all owe Professor Stone a vote of thanks for setting forth “10 propositions that seem to me to define ‘liberal’ today.” And we should honor his courage. When you nail your principles to the mast then you are inviting people to compare theory with practice, and you are asking people to cry “hypocrite.”

Well, everyone is a hypocrite, and nobody lives up to their principles. But still, liberals might like to know just where conservatives think they fall down.

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that I haven’t noticed too many liberals doubting their truths lately. To me they seem embattled and closed-minded in their devotion to their liberal shibboleths.

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that in my experience the hallmark of actual liberals is the striking lack of respect and tolerance they display towards people that disagree with them. Indeed, in my experience, they are ruthless in using institutional power to persecute those who disagree with them.

3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that in my experience liberals believe that only liberals and their clients have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. Other people better watch what they say, because liberals like to silence people that disagree with them by calling them “racists” and “bigots.”

4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that I find it hard to believe that any government that spends about 35 percent of national income, that is the income created by the work of the American people, is treating the people as anything other than “subjects.”

5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that the experience of a lifetime prompts me to say that in my experience liberals have absolutely no regard for the liberty, equality, and dignity of people like the white working class and “fundamentalist” religious believers. In fact there has been research done on this.

At the Democratic convention of 1992, Bolce and De Maio reported in The Public Interest, over half the delegates rated Christian fundamentalists on a “feeling thermometer” graduated from 0 to 100—at an ice cold zero.

Half of the active liberals assembled at the Democratic Convention couldn’t have imagined having a more negative opinion of Christian fundamentalists. They must, one assumes, rate them equal to rapists and axe murderers.

6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that over the last twenty years it is liberals who have utterly refused to consider any attempts to improve the government programs you mention. Education? Liberals are standing in the schoolhouse door. Health care? Liberals refuse to reform it. Social Security? Liberals use it as a way to scare seniors into voting Democratic.

7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that liberals act on the basis of their sectarian faith all the time, call it what you will: liberalism, secular humanism, modernism. Let us tell truth and shame the devil. People bring their faith to the public square, even liberals, and they usually want the government to legislate their faith into law, especially liberals.

8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that liberals only seem interested in the protection of their own liberties and the liberties of their clients. But if you study the history of law you discover that the great weight of legal precedent deals with the slow and painful development of developing rules to govern transactions between people, the broken fence, the damaged goods, the contract gone wrong. Liberals seem to have little understanding of the difficulty of securing justice in the common vicissitudes of life.

9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that I have to try very hard to give liberals credit for concern about the safety and security of average American citizens from enemies foreign and domestic.

10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that I have always been led to believe that liberals believed in a living constitution. So what constitutional value are we protecting this week?

Oh, I forgot. The constitutional right of Al-Qaeda telephone callers to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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