Spotting Fake News Part 1: What’s a Liberal Really?

One of the surest ways to generate and perpetuate fake news is to make sure that a debate is bound to be a failure from the start.  If people aren’t sure of the terms of the debate, it becomes easier to sneak falsehoods and half truths past the viewer.  If you’ve ever tried to sit down and map exactly what it means to be a liberal or conservative you may have noticed there was some difficulty.  I encourage you to try  to write down what you see as the social and economic positions of both the liberals and conservatives before reading the article.

The terms liberal and conservative are some of the most commonly used terms in modern news media, they are however also some of the most misunderstood.   I am not saying that liberals or conservative are just misunderstood and really have your best interests at heart. I am saying that most news outlets use those terms in a way that is imprecise, historically inaccurate, and/or duplicitous. An effective informed debate is one of the cornerstones of an effective democracy or republic, and such a debate becomes impossible if essential terms in the debate are misused or imprecise. I’m here to remedy some of that problem with a discussion of the historical origins and modern manifestations of liberalism and conservatism. After I get through a look at the real roots of conservatism and liberalism I’m going to show how misunderstandings about each political ideology makes it easy for fake news to slip by unnoticed.

This will be a thoroughly simplified explanation, but it should elucidate some of the issues inherent to modern political discourse.

OG liberalism

Classical liberalism was an Enlightenment philosophy strongly associated with John Locke and his compatriots. They argue that societies fates are decided by individuals rather than dependent on a complex network of social interactions. They believed that because humans were atomistic, social welfare programs would only promote laziness and inefficiency, therefore laissez-faire was the surest route to economic efficiency and total societal well being. It is important to note that according to classical liberals individuals are the primary movers, and individuals make markets. As we can see when discussing modern American political identifications we have a problem. American “conservatives” are economically classical liberals, the government that governs least is the government that governs best, and the positions of classical liberals are commonly discussed as right wing. This is at odds with the narrative of a liberal media and the entire characterization of both the left and the right sides of the American political spectrum.

Classical iberals as a group are more likely to want government out of the way on issues of marriage, drug use, gay rights, they advocate for a stronger separation of church and state, and economically they are more likely than anyone to rail against government regulation of enterprises.  If there’s anyone who would accurately be describes as a liberal in American politics it’s Ron Paul.  As we can see, political discussions in America are already becoming problematic, and this is just one of myriad reasons for this difficulty.

Neoliberalism

The next step is to discuss neoliberalism. Neoliberals were classical liberals who saw the failings of classical liberalism and its economic recommendations as largely responsible for the Great Depression. In response they then tried to form a political/economic ideology that used governments to empower markets instead of remaining hands off.  This economic prescription leads to policies that include bailing out banks while simultaneously eliminating regulation that limits their abilities to act freely within markets. This ideology has dominated both parties (and the world as a whole) since Regan.  Note, they are not looking to empower people, they are empowering powerful market actors, this is the ideological foundation of trickle down economics. While trickle-down economics is only verbally espoused by American Republicans both parties have had policies that have essentially been anchored in Neoliberal economic ideology.  If we recall the beginning of the financial sector’s collapse in 2007-2008 both parties quickly bailed out the banks in order “to stabilize and bring confidence back the markets,” but jobs bills and expansions to social safety nets were either watered down or completely destroyed. Both parties showed in one quick and easy way that their policy differences weren’t between conservatism and liberalism, but instead the major American parties sought different degrees of Neoliberalism. So now we have a situation in which American “liberals” show mixed support for the economic prescriptions of classical or Neoliberals, American “conservatives” most closely resemble classical liberals, and leaders of both parties implement policy that is just varying degrees of Neoliberalsim. If you as a voter for either party have wondered why both parties leaders sound like liars, this is a big part of the reason why.  They are speaking in a different language.

OG conservatism

The foundations of classical conservatism rest on the idea that society is based on a series of complex interactions, and those complex interactions cause society to in some ways act as a family (1660’s classical conservatism, real old school) . This way of thinking was popular amongst the English nobility because it reinforced their position of patriarchal power over society, but in a bizarre twist this family metaphor led to the invention of the welfare state. Using the analogy of the family groups, wealthy and powerful conservatives started designing programs to help the poor. If the nobility were the fathers, it was their duty to support the children, thus social welfare programs are born out of a sense of patriarchy. While some of their economic programs were fairly progressive, their social programs were focused around maintaining traditional familial and class roles. What we can now see is a schism between modern American conservatives and classical conservatives. Classical conservatives wanted to conserve their social context, powerful nobility and a complacent, productive, but immobile lower class were the means by which figureheads at the time sought to assure their continued dominance. Contemporary American Conservatives want to conserve the percieved social context of the Norman Rockwell, All-American, Nuclear Family and the better subset of values that accompanied time period: bootstraps, self sufficiency, family togetherness, and all that. What this shows is that conservatism is a fundamentally relative social belief. A socially conservative mongol warlord previous to Genghis Khan might advocate for small disparate tribes as the best way to insure tribal stability and moral values. A social conservative during the founding of The United States could have been a monarchist, because that was the status quo. The fundamental ethos of conservatism isn’t racism or bigotry as so many “liberals” like to characterize it. The fundamental ethos of conservatism is that we got it right last time so stop screwing with it.  Much of the reason Trump appealed to so many Americans was he openly appealed to maintaining/reinstating what many saw as the true American Status quo, the philisophical essence of OG conservatism.

The ironic twist of the welfare state invented by the Classical Conservatives is that their programs are strongly correlated with inter-generational economic mobility, and in many ways lead to social change.  You can’t always get what you want.

Basic Keynesianism

The last piece of the puzzle we’ll address in this post is Keynesianism.  Admittedly it’s more an economic theory, but the Keynesian revolution is essential to understanding modern progressivism, i.e. the real American left.   Keynes was an influential economist who saw the Great Depression largely in terms of a crisis of demand. People didn’t have the means to purchase goods from the economy.  Because people had no money, there was no net demand, because there was no net demand there was no activity, because there was no activity the economy collapsed. Keynes saw the government as a potential solution to a crisis of demand, and he proposed that the government could create demand in a down economy by lowering taxes (especially on the poor), creating jobs, and using social safety nets in order to guarantee that lower classes could continue to consume even if they were jobless or low earning. If the Economy was exploding Keynes proposed raising taxes (especially on the wealthy) and limiting the expansion of social programs in order to prevent bubbles. Keynesian economics was the basis of the wildly successful New Deal, which (in tandem with manufacturing and trade imbalances created by WW II) was largely responsible for America’s astounding recovery from The Great Depression. As successful as Keynesian policy was, some part of it never sat right with the American public. Keynesian policy smells of government control and economies ruled by technocrats. Even when it proves successful Keynesian thought has a serious ideological battle against notions of individualism and the old, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” mentality that is so fundamental to much of America. Now American “Liberals” are kinda socially Classically Liberal, but they are economically Keynesian.  “Conservatives” are socially OG Conservative but either economically liberal or neoliberal. this is the source of that difficulty.  Bernie appeals to modern progressives because he is in many ways a Keynesian, whereas Hillary is a staunch neoliberal.

How it all fits together

As you can see modern discussions of politics are a bit strange, but how does this contribute to crap news and crap candidates?  Let’s build some grids. The first grid will show what average Americans likely expects from the average person and average politician. The second grid will show what each group actually believes in and advocates for.  Please click the thumbnail to expand the image, I’m having trouble getting the chart to display the way I want it to at the moment.

This discrepancy creates a serious problem. Debates and political discussions in society at large take place on that first grid. These are debates about what we see as conservative and liberal, and these debates revolve around poor definitions and misunderstandings. Democrats call Republicans racist, stupid, poor people haters. Republicans call Liberals greedy, elitist, and layabouts. Neither description is right.  All the while politicians/news outlets talk to us and appeal to the vaguest positive qualities of the philosophical traditions we only sort of hold because that’s the easy way to get votes/views.  It’s hard to spot bullshit when reality itself has been obscured.

This ideological schism between politicians and the public is of course only a small piece of the whole crap politics pie.  Changing institutional features of congress, the increasing influence of money on campaigns, and the steady decline of news into infotainment all play significant roles in restoring the republic.

If you have comments or want to correct me don’t be afraid, debate is welcome.  Remember, this is just the beginning of what will be an expanding discussion on modern political parties and news so if you think something could be expanded upon let me know, and I’ll make an effort to discuss it.

Image from Wikimedia commons, “Problems, problems…” Ion Chibzii from Chisinau. Moldova.