Are You Liberal Or Conservative? Chances are, you’re both.
Plus, the idea of 'left' and 'right' in edition #50 of Media Buddhi.
There’s a joke I once heard: ‘When it comes to our own individual rights, we are all liberals.’
In other words, we don’t want others to tell us what not to do. We don’t want to be told whom we can talk to, whom we should marry, how we should dress, how late we can stay outdoors, and so on. The exception to this comes when we are so used to being told what to do (because of existing norms) that we feel out-of-depth at the idea of making our own choices.
We are also deeply conservative about some things, even if we think of ourselves as fairly liberal. A few years ago, I found out to my surprise, that my affinity for environmental movements springs from both liberal and conservative roots. (Indeed the word conservation is defined as: “prevention of wasteful use of resource” and has the same roots as conservative.)
Chances are that, like me, everyone is a mix of liberal and conservative.
Why then should we pigeonhole ourselves into categories of: ‘I’m a liberal’ or ‘I’m a conservative’?
Meaning of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’
“Is there a more elastic word in the English language than liberal?” asks Michael Goldfarb, a journalist in his BBC piece on the topic. He goes on to declare:
…Liberal means whatever the speaker says it means, although that is often not what the hearer thinks it means. Confusion reigns.
This state of confusion arises because the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ have different meanings in the United States and the United Kingdom — two countries from whom we have borrowed our political vocabulary. In the same sentence, we sometimes use ‘liberal’ in the American sense and ‘conservative’ in the British sense. This confusion increases when you add a third term to the mix, ‘libertarian’.
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has a crisp summary. In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion he writes,
In the United States, the word liberal refers to progressive or left-wing politics, and I will use the word in this sense. But in Europe and elsewhere, the word liberal is truer to its original meaning—valuing liberty above all else, including in economic activities. When Europeans use the word liberal, they often mean something more like the American term libertarian, which cannot be placed easily in the left-right spectrum.
A libertarian is someone who values individual freedom above all else. Libertarians don’t like to be told what to do, and this extends to their attitudes towards government or even, government programmes for the poor.
Liberals in India
In India, the term ‘liberal’ is used as a slur these days, usually by supporters of the BJP government. Does that mean then that BJP supporters don’t believe in individual freedom?
My former colleague Sagarika Ghose who has been the target of many an attack for being ‘a liberal’ writes: “the word ‘liberal’ comes from liberty and primarily means a belief in individual freedom. The liberal believes in azaadi (freedom)…”
Later on, she says,
Liberals are not party political. We are not by definition supporters of any political party. Instead we are believers in freedom and liberty.
Adding ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ to the mix
The epistemological confusion increases when we start using ‘left’ and ‘right’ along with ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’.
This is because there is an old connection between the terms — in the French Parliament, the legislators who sat to the right of the assembly president’s chair were known as the ‘conservatives’. These conservatives wanted to preserve the monarchy and social hierarchies. Those who sat to the left of the chair were opposed to the conservatives. They valued progressive change. That’s how ‘right’ came to be associated with ‘conservative’ and ‘left’ with ‘liberal.
However in the contemporary world, ‘right’ and ‘conservative’ cannot be considered synonyms.
The ‘left’ refers to a preference for communist thought or socialism or to left-wing ideas like equality, fraternity, progress and inclusion.
The ‘right’ refers to a preference for authority, social hierarchies, nationalism and anti-immigration policies. It also refers to those who value individual freedom over everything else.
The ‘right’ in India
In India, the word ‘right’ is usually associated with the BJP. But if ‘right’ also refers to those who value individual freedom, does it follow then that the BJP values individual freedom highly? Does it mean then that the Congress party doesn’t value individual freedom?
You see the confusion. To ease matters, we should stop assigning ‘right’ and ‘left’ to the BJP and Congress. Both parties have policies that are associated with the left such as ‘welfare-statism’. They also have policies associated with the right such as liberalising the economy.
Especially when it comes to the BJP and Hindutva, the journalist Aakar Patel writes, “we must…discard the word ‘right’ and all of its attendant meanings”. He gives us at least two reasons for this in his book, Our Hindu Rashtra: What It Is. How We Got Here.
One, — as stated above — the BJP is virtually indistinguishable from the Congress when it comes to policies associated with the right.
Two, Hindutva politics is distinct from the politics of the right. Patel writes, “the BJP is not like the Republican Party or the Conservative party” because the latter don’t always have to take adversarial positions against minorities. Patel cites that Republicans are viewed as racists but they are also the party of Abraham Lincoln “who chose civil war over letting the South continue with slavery.”
Unlike them, the BJP isn’t wedded to any social or economic policy. The only thing that guides them is Hindutva.
Patel writes, “This is why the supposedly right-wing BJP and Hindutva can dabble in what would otherwise be seen as socialism and handouts, without internal resistance or discomfort.”
Labels are a guide, but…
When we start our thinking about our politics, it is immensely helpful to think of ourselves as belonging to one camp or the other. These labels are after all a guide through which we can find our own values. They also help us find more people like us.
But research shows that once we find ourselves in a group that we identify with, we tend to find more and more reasons to belong to that group. We also find more reasons to dislike the other group. This tendency is wired into our minds.
We’re stuck with each other
What then, are we to do? One way is to acknowledge that there is a place for both liberal and conservative thought in our lives.
Jonathan Haidt (cited above) suggests that “liberals and conservatives are like yin and yang”. He provides two examples. He writes, “Liberals are experts in care; they are better able to see the victims of existing social arrangements, and they continually push us to update those arrangements and invent new ones.”
Haidt also says, “social conservatives are right that you don’t usually help the bees by destroying the hive.” A little later in the book he says, “the urge to help the inner-city poor led to welfare programs in the 1960s that reduced the value of marriage, increased out-of-wedlock births, and weakened African American families.”
The economist Tyler Cowen is all for economic growth but believes that “inviolable human rights…should constrain the quest for higher economic growth”. He speaks of three key questions in this book Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals:
What can we do to boost the rate of economic growth?
What can we do to make our civilisation more stable?
How should we deal with environmental problems?
The first of these is commonly considered a right-wing or libertarian concern, the second a conservative preoccupation, and the third, especially in the United States, is most commonly associated with left-wing perspectives. Yet these questions should be central, rather than peripheral, to every political body. We can see right away how the political spectrum must be reshaped to adequately address these concerns. Politics should be about finding the best means to achieve these ends, rather than disputing the importance of these ends.”
I think I’ll leave the last word to him. What do you think?
This is the 50th edition of Media Buddhi, and as I’ve written before, I view these pieces as first drafts.
Does an article end with its publication? Or should its publication be seen as the starting point? I believe in the latter, not the least because often readers know more than the author. In that spirit, feel free to write in with suggestions, edits and criticism, either here, on email, or on social platforms. I will add edits with appropriate citations. And thanks for reading!