Though increasingly irrelevant as these phrases get replaced with the even harder to define phrases “right and left,” traditionally the phrase “conservatism” and “liberalism” has come to define the philosophical divide in American politics. The oversimplification was that conservatives wanted smaller government in economic issues with increased involvement in so-called “social issues” and support for military action overseas while liberals want the opposite. However, these aren’t beliefs so much as policy statements as they hardly explain why either group supposedly wants what they claim they want at any given moment.
Policy alone isn’t a particularly good justification for defining an ideology or philosophy. After all, if you scour the internet, you can find all sorts of articles written in favor of the “conservative” or “liberal” case for any policy position even if they contradict existing the absolute norm that makes those policies make sense. Then you have conservative and liberal candidates supporting the same positions in different contexts, such as both the “liberal” Obama and “conservative” Bush causing wars once elected, the “conservative” Reagan and the “liberal” Michael Bloomberg both supporting gun control, the “conservative” William F. Buckley and the “liberal” Gore Vidal both supporting marijuana legalization, and Hillary Clinton who can’t keep a policy consistent for more than a week. Then, of course, there are political ideologies that violate policy norms like Trump-style populism or in-fighting in those ideologies like classical vs. progressive liberalism. So that begs the question, then, as to what separates them or what defines either ideology?
Well, after a lot of conversations with people in the political sphere and studying different ideologies, I came up with my own definition. It’s hardly scientific, but I wanted to give how I tend to analyze these divides as I have found it to be the most consistent way to analyze different candidates or groups in politics. So I’m sharing it here in the hope that it might help people when analyzing the political divide as it seems to be consistent across different groups or politicians.
Loosely defined, a conservative is someone who looks to the past for inspiration while a liberal is someone who believes that the world should be a certain way and that legislation should be used to make it so. Conservatives traditionally believe in maintaining institutions as they exist or existed while preserving them to govern in the modern day (as that is where the term “conserve”-ative comes from). Meanwhile, the liberal becomes interested in concepts about what the world should be and tries to build institutions or organizations that will reflect that idea and thus accomplish their goals for mankind.
To explain conservatives, most people grow up with existing institutions, be that religion, nations, corporations, non-profits, etc. Conservatives seek to maintain those existing institutions and believe that keeping them alive is important for the benefit of society. They realize that there is much wisdom in the past and that what came before still applies to today so they seek to use it when governing or creating new institutions.
There is much wisdom in this as most of what human beings have already experienced gives us insight into what tomorrow could look like, why utopian ideas fail, and what we can expect from our interactions with others or technology. After all, most of modern philosophy is built on the works of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Christ has already risen from the dead, and the American Revolution has already happened so it seems unnecessary to reinvent any of these for the modern day when we can just maintain their impact. Also, the past serves as inspiration for future ideas as well, as Walt Disney in part built Disneyland based on experiences from his childhood, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien both wrote their own work based on their love of fairytales, and much of the American Capitol building’s architecture is done in a Greco-Roman style. It’s fair to say that there is much that has been done or can be learned from history, so there is an obvious appeal to using what has come before to serve as a guiding light for tomorrow.
The two biggest drawbacks of that though both involve an inability to advance. The first is reactionarism. At times, what we know can be deemed incredibly safe so we refuse to make adjustments as the world changes around us. This can be an inability to embrace new technology, refusal to acknowledge that people today aren’t as interested in what came before as they used to be, or inability to make peace with the fact that the institution we used to love is no longer run by the same people so it’s not going to behave like it used to today.
The world is always changing and people come and go. There is much we can learn from the past that can help us understand humanity, but simply repeating what was popular in yesteryear isn’t the same as maintaining it or using it in the modern day. It’s why a lot of people can grow out of touch and simply fail to adapt as opposed to facing the current reality.
Which brings us to the second problem: some conservatives merely don’t want to change when the world around them is changing. It’s more just a matter of going with the flow or accepting what already exists as though any new or abnormal idea will fail just because it’s unfamiliar. 99 times out of 100, that’s usually correct, but that’s really more cynicism if not built on something objective or inherent. In short, when the institutions rot, there’s not much left for them to “conserve” and they find themselves at odds with modernity.
On the other end of the spectrum is the liberal. One may be tempted to call them “futurists” since they bill themselves as the opposite of conservatives who are the guardians of the past. However, the future doesn’t exist whereas the past did so it’s impossible to “conserve” a future.
Instead liberals turn to the origin of what they want the future to be: an image in their heads. Be it philosophical, such as the writings of an ideologue, moral, such as a belief in justice, or seeing a problem in the world and hope to address it, such as eradicating poverty. Plenty of conservatives may want similar ends as well, but the methodology is entirely different. Whereas the conservative seeks to maintain, the liberal seeks to create or change to reflect a vision of what they believe could be at some point.
So their biggest weakness is Utopianism. Because what they want may only be based on how they feel the world should be, it can be based on imagination purely. This is great for art, but terrible for policy and social reform.
Not being based on anything but an idea, what people want may not actually be good for them and may not be based in reality. As the Catholic Church notes, man is born corrupted due to the nature of original sin and, even after baptism, our desires are still disordered. For that reason, without humility and objective reality, ideas and ideologies lead to ruin.
This is why, more controversially, the far-right tends to reflect the far-left more than it does actual conservatism (hear me out). Most of the alleged end results for certain groups in the far right are based on ideas they haven’t experienced enacted. After all, America was never an ethnostate run by a single leader, it was never a workers’ paradise, it usually only has an unregulated market before the government steps in, and most of the people who idolize the past these days didn’t grow up during it. So, it’s fair to say that their ideology is just as utopian or removed from reality and would need to be reenacted through force. It isn’t too surprising, then, that the far-left and far-right usually have the same beliefs on issues like abortion, race, and economics.
Which is also why many liberals become conservatives over time as well. It’s not that people drop their views on humanity and suddenly adopt a desire to change their economic platform (though that can happen). It’s more that either they’ll eventually take over the existing order and seek to maintain what they created, or simply age out so that their ideas are no longer popular like any trend and thus be treated like they’re a product of a previous generation. Either way, most things become conservative eventually because most things age.
Though hardly scientific, this tends to be my understanding of what separates the “conservatives” and the “liberals.” Across different ideologies or institutions, that, more than policy, seems to separate the two philosophies. So when analyzing what perspective someone is coming from, remember to ask if they’re trying to preserve something, or create something new.
For those wondering my views, if they couldn’t tell from previous blogposts, I’m happy to respond that I’m a
