Whenever I watch the news (which I confess, is mostly watching The Daily Show), I keep hearing these two words over and over again: Conservative . . . and Liberal.
Now, I understand the basic concepts of conservative and liberal. I can make a conservative estimate, and I can certainly add a liberal amount of butter to anything I’m cooking right now. But when it comes to political discussions, I can make no sense of these words whatsoever.
Until today I had a fairly good general sense of what these words meant. “Conservative” is derived from the word “conserve,” meaning “keep things more or less the way they are.” And “liberal” means the exact opposite, i.e., to constantly want to change things. I’ve also typically associated the word conservative with the Republican Party, and liberal with the Democratic Party.
Apparently, I am completely wrong on all counts.
I did a little poking around on Wikipedia on the actual meanings of these words, and brother, was I sorry. I’ve never been so confused in my life, especially when I came across liberal conservatism and conservative liberalism. I don’t advise reading up on liberalism on Wikipedia unless you enjoy making your brain hurt. Just one excerpt:
In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as possible in order to allow the exercise of individual freedom.
What I find to be so confusing here is that modern-day conservatives are against “big government”, but in fact, being FOR big government is how they started. Conservatives– i.e., people who liked the way things had been for centuries . . . were kings and nobility. They (i.e., the government) owned everything, and the average citizen owned absolutely nothing.
Because royalty was the governmental status quo for so long, it was liberals who started yakking about making all sorts of annoying changes like free markets, property rights, decentralized power, and lower taxes. If you look at the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights is one of the most liberal documents that had ever been created up to that time. The idea of letting the average citizen own a gun . . . VERY liberal idea. Of course, all this original liberalism is now conservatism.
Now on the other side, when you consider the recent school teacher protest up in Wisconsin, everybody told me that this was a bunch of liberals, but in fact, what they were trying to do is maintain the status quo that had built up over the last, what, 80 years? The conservatives who were trying to change the deal were not being conservative at all; they were, in a strict sense of the word, being very liberal, in that they were making major changes in government and social policy.
The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, freed the slaves. Not the most conservative action. Pretty darned liberal, when you think about it.
More recently, George W. Bush, who was supposedly the candidate of the conservative party, set out about doing very UNconservative things, like invading Iraq and completely altering their government, all the while borrowing vast sums of money. Not fiscally conservative at all. Extremely liberal spending of money, actually. And Bill Clinton, a member of liberal party, submitted budgets that had surpluses. How terribly conservative.
You see why I am so confused?
I’m not making a judgment about who is right or wrong here. Leaping to an “us vs. them” argument misses the point. The point is, I keep hearing these words conservative and liberal, and, like Mandy Patinkin in the Princess Bride, I want to say, “You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
© Justin Locke
Justin Locke is an entertaining speaker. Call him at 781-330-8143 to discuss having him appear at your next event.
