The Myth of social liberals, fiscal conservatives

I ran across that old media-induced, ideological impossibility the other day from someone claiming to be a libertarian.

There is no possibility of someone being a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. The two are mutually exclusive, on both sides of the equation. It is impossible to want to change the social structure of this nation without wanting the government to get involved, and this requires money. And it is impossible to want the government to spend less money and still expect any form of liberal growth.

A social liberal wants society to change, usually to advance towards some more ideal goal. Wanting it to stay the way it is can not be liberal, by definition. If you want it to stay the same, or to reverse, you are conservative. If you want it to progress very slowly, through a "natural--" meaning "undirected," evolution, you are at best a moderate, unwilling to make a change even though you want one to happen. Change only comes about when people actively make a change, and that means liberalism. The way things get changed in this nation is through the people-- ie, the government. We are a government by, for and of the people (well, we are when things are going well), and government is (supposed to be) nothing more than the method the people use to get things done. Just because the current usurper of the government doesnot acknowledge this does not make it untrue.

Therefore, the people have to use the government to create changes. Even if the people change without the government, the government still has to change its own policies to catch up with the people. Otherwise you have segregated schools and workplaces, for instance, and laws which target certain groups more than others. Society won't become more equal when laws penalize lower income groups for theft yet let Ken Lay escape without penalty. Or when the punish crack use more than cocaine use. The laws must be changed, the procedures must be changed, and often people's awareness must be changed. That requires spending money. Thus, a social liberal, whether they realize it or not, wants a more active government, and that means one that spends money.

The other side of the equation, that one can be a fiscal conservative yet still want social change, thus fails. And the phrase "fiscal conservative" is an oxymoron anyway. One cannot be a conservative--meaning someone who doesn't want change-- and expect the fiscal state of the union to improve. History and logic both prove this. Historically, the economy suffers under conservatives, and although it does not always improve under liberals, when it makes significant improvements, it is under liberal policy. Reaganites don't see this, believing that the economy grew under Reagan, but the only increases were due to the fact that Reagan had crashed the economy so far down that the minor improvements under his reign of error seem impressive. By the end of the Reagan error, the economy had barely made it back to where it was when Reagan took over, and even then only after Reagan had abandoned his "trickle down" nonesense, raising taxes and growing the government to its largest size in history.

Logically, you can't decrease the amount of investment in a business and expect it to grow. The most you can hope for is that what you have invested in the past will yield enough dividends to keep you afloat. But as any business owner or investor can confirm, you don't make money without spending money. That doesn't mean spending it recklessly-- you can spend money and still fail. But you can't become conservative and expect your business to grow. Or your economy. Republicans who claim that Democrats need to understand economics 101 don't understand that Democrats have moved beyond economics 101 to 401 or even graduate level studies. Econ 101 is basic theory, which works only in a vacuum. In physics 101 we are told that a cannonball and a feather dropped from a tower fall at the same rate. By grad school, a physics student understands that they don't, due to real world factors such as air resistance, friction, etc. Republicans are dropping economic feathers and fudging the results when the cannonballs the liberals drop strike the ground first and hardest. A strong economy, in other words, requires government spending. A fiscal conservative is not possible.

To make social changes you need a strong government with money to spend. To make a strong economy, you need a government willing to invest wisely in economic growth. You also need natural resources, including people, and you need money from the beginning. A liberal social program educates and makes use of a nation's entire social base-- all of its people. It educates them, it keeps them at an economic level that maximizes health, happiness, and other productivity factors. It also gives them something to shoot for, so that they want to maximize their own potential-- this rules out the form of socialism that the Soviets practiced (though not all forms of socialism). And most of all, it ensures equal opportunity from conception (meaning prenatal care). Anything less fails to utilize all resources to their best, and thus it fails to maximize the economy. If the economy is not maximized, then the fiscal state of the union is weaker than it should be, and if only a portion of the populace have full access to the rewards of our society, then the fiscal state is not maximized.

Liberals are best for the people. They are best for the economy. They are best for the fiscal health of the nation. And historically, government operates more efficiently under liberals, anyway. Government grew under Reagan, and shrunk under Clinton. So the next time you hear the media encouraging people to be social liberals and fiscal conservatives, just remember it is another attempt to get you to vote for Bush, and therefore just another advertising ploy for the Republican Party.

A social liberal is one who wants social issues and liberties to be as open and free as possible. He wants equal opportunities and freedom for everyone, and above all social justice.

And despite the warbling around here, fiscal conservative does not mean "pro-big-business-at-the-expense-of-the-people, a fiscal conservative is one who believes he should take as little as possible from the public, spend it wisely and not be wasteful.

The two actually go very well together. It is entirely possible to be frugal and still create a social safety net.

So read it again for what I said, not for what you wanted me to say.

"It is impossible to want to change the social structure of this nation without wanting the government to get involved, and this requires money. And it is impossible to want the government to spend less money and still expect any form of liberal growth."

You make an assumption with which I disagree. First of all, "fiscal conservative" doesn not mean, necessarily, spending less money, it means being careful with how money is spent and how well, if at all, the budget is balanced.

Secondly, one could make the case that the government could in fact spend less money by cutting spending on the military and corporate subsidies, while still fully supporting prgrams that foster "liberal growth," as you put it.

So yes indeed, one can be a social liberal and a fiscal conservative.

My belief is that if you spend much less on the government as a whole, the economy will suffer from the repurcussions, thus being fiscally conservative will hurt the economy to the point where you can't spend more money on social programs. So if my argument is based on a false premise, that's it, not your argument that you can spend less and get more. What you say is my flawed premise is actually my argument, though it was rather poorly explained, I guess.

I said taxing only what is necessary and not being wasteful. Where in my post did you get the idea that spending on social programs is wasteful? I am all for it, I wish we would re-assign a large portion of the military to a civilian service role, take all the money being spent on useless big weapons systems and instead create nationalized healthcare and improve our schools. That would take a lot of money, but none of that would be wasteful. As long as we are frugal and really get our money's worth, we are BEING fiscally conservative.

A couple of points:

First, I was responding to the post above mine, which does talk about spending less.

Second, I would not in any way consider a national health care plan as fiscally conservative or libertarian in the least, and I can't imagine any members of the libertarian party considering it so. If the difinition of the term "fiscal conservative" has changed so much in the last year or so that it can include such spending, then you are right, and my whole argument-- as well as the term "fiscal conservative--" is completely meaningless.

is that you are not recognizing the line where social and fiscal policies inform each other.

A politician who claims to be fiscally conservative and then takes funding away from a social program is not doing so because he is fiscally conservative. He is doing it because he is SOCIALLY conservative. His social conservatism is informing his fiscally conservative practices. Eliminating wasteful spending is always fiscally conservative, but in social terms it might be either conservative, liberal, neutral, or a compromise made to appease all sides of the issue. Eliminating wasteful spending by gutting social programs is a socially conservative action. Eliminating wasteful spending by increasing oversight and not allowing corrupt private enterprise to sell the government $1000 dollar toilet seats (thereby freeing up funding for a social program) is a socially liberal and fiscally conservative action.

You just described ME and a lot of other social liberal/fiscal conservatives.

Throwing money willy-nilly at problems rarely solves anything.

Right. It just hasn't ever actually happened that way because the people who proclaim their 'fiscal conservatism' always cut social rather than any other spending.

are often also pushing pro-corporate policies. I always though "fiscal conservative" meant you didn't run budget deficits, but obviously it's a code for "Republican Lite on economic issues"

does not mean that they ARE.

Bush ran on a platform of fiscal (and social, but that is another story) conservative, and he has done nothing that qualifies as conservative in his economic policies.

I never realized that what I like was impossible. Guess I must become a non-liberal GOP or a liberal Dem. sigh

I wonder if either party is a "big tent" -

"Liberals are best for the people. They are best for the economy. They are best for the fiscal health of the nation" - but I thought that was because of fiscal discipline that calmed the bond markets keeping interest rates lower than they would otherwise be. sigh

:-)

There are authoritarian extremist ideologues in both parties.

So now you know! :-)

A social liberal wants society to change, usually to advance towards some more ideal goal.

To say that a "social liberal" wants more government intervention is a completely twisting of the word "liberal", which at one point in time was derived from liberty, meaning freedom. I suppose after all these years the meaning has changed, but originally the term social liberal meant people that didn't want government (or anyone) telling them how to live their lives. People who pushed to eliminate laws that restricted birth control to married women were social liberals, people who pushed to eliminate multi-racial marriage laws were social liberals, and people today who pushed to eliminate sodomy laws are social liberals.

When a libertarian tells you that they are socially liberal, what they mean is that they believe government should stop trying to engage in social engineering--a notion completely the opposite of how you defined the term. Like I said, you can define the term any way you want, but to claim that libertarians want to see government pushing some social goal is completely inaccurate.

For instance Milton Friedman calls himself a "liberal" but he does it with a wink and a smile because he knows that word has been ripped from it's historical moorings.


He calls himself a liberal cuz he subscribes to the limited governance advocated by economic and political philiosophers like John Locke and Adam Smith.


People who wanted to conserve the classical liberalism of Locke and Smith earned the appelation conservative.

Traditional liberals or as I say garden variety liberals like FDR, JFK, and say Bill Clinton wanted to keep as much of the classical liberalism as possible but realized a totally free market system produced profound inequities that needed to be addressed.

So the challenge for traditional liberals is to allow as much freedom as possible in the personal and economic sphere while addressing the inequities these freedoms cause.

A liberterian just accepts these inequities as part of the natural order but some would argue these inequities would work themselves out by themself.

I agree about Milton, and I've seen him do it. I think he does it because in academic economic circles, that's how the word is used. I have a BA in Economics (never got an advanced degree or anything, so I'm not pushing my credentials) and remember how professors would talk about the difference between liberal economists and leftist economists. Needless to say, it took a few weeks to shift gears...

I seriously doubt more than a tenth of the people who invoke his name have ever actually read Weath of Nations.

like creating an enviromment where commerce could flourish by building an infrastructure.

He also said when "businessmen get together the public good is rarely discussed".

A deeply religious man, Adam Smith was no corporate sop


But he did believe in free markets.

not the 'free, but only for the big guys and only as long as they dominate' ones we have today

As I said, government is the way the people get things done. It's part of the people, not some distant entity to abuse the people.

Sure, sometimes creating more social equality or justice means eliminating laws. Often, in fact. But there is no difference except terminology between that and what you are calling "social engineering." It is still government deciding what should be done and what shouldn't. How would you fit slavery into your definition? Should the government stay out of the issue of whether humans could own other humans? Or should government forbid it? That isn't a case of government removing a law, it's the case of government creating laws to overturn a millenia-old institution.

If all you mean by the term "social liberal" is that government doesn't pass discriminatory laws, then that's a conservative ideology. You don't want society to change, which is the same as wanting it to stay the same. You just don't want "government" involved in personal freedoms. That's good as far as it goes, but it does not help to create a more free society. Absence of all laws does not mean freedom. Or would you say it does? If not, then it isn't a question of laws, of social engineering as you call it, so much as a question of which laws. All laws shape society. Which way do you want it to be engineered? Simply removing a law which allows slavery will not make slavery go away. You have to actively change it. Same with poverty, education differential, marital patterns...

Our current society is engineered. The lack of that engineering would not be liberty, but anarchy.

believes in maximum personal autonomy... That individuals left to their own devices are best equipped to map their own destinies.

Now we can debate how much personal freedom is consistent with social order and what to do about folks who are unable to compete because of some real or artificial handicap but a classical liberal is one who belived in maximum personal autonomy.

Traditional liberals embraced much of the old or classical liberalism but realized some folks needed help to maximize their individual autonomy.


LBJ said it best, " you can't have a fair race when one of the runners comes to the race with a leg iron."

As a traditional liberal I embrace equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome.

Some folks are just smarter, handsomer, harder working, more witty than others....

I just want to make sure the race is fair and we are all able to compete.

Fiscal Conservative = a Keynesian who believe in essentially free markets but also believes that there is a role for goverment in regulating the economy and helping people who are injured by the imbalances in the market

I am confused. Are you saying that there is no possibility of someone being a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, or are you trying to point out the fallacy of this myth?

The ideal being, make a lot of money any way possible, screw everyone else, and have fun without constraint.

Neo-con
Neo-lib

Same old feudalism.

The ideal being, make a lot of money any way possible, screw everyone else, and have fun without constraint.

How predictable. Your description in no way represents libertarianism, and this has been gone over innumerable times here at this website.

Same old feudalism.

Same old purposeful mischaracterization of something you clearly don't understand.

Tell me how, precisely, feudalism is in any way indicative of something 'socially liberal'.

Oh, that's right: you can't.

Serfs didn't have any rights....


In a truly liberterian society we'd have lots of rights but I am concerned about the excesses of liberterianism in a society as complex as ours...

As Burke said "men of intemperate minds can never be free" and therefore there has to be more than minimal controls or some folks will screw it up for everybody else....

I guess in a perfect utopia the state would "whither away" and we could all add to the common good by doing as we please but we're not close to that yet.

.... Libertarians are against regulating bizness, against most taxation, against the govt doing damn near anything.

I'm most definitely a social liberal/fiscal conservative, and most certainly NOT a Libertarian, who I consider to be the logical inverse of Communists and equally as crazy. :)

but it would be hard to apply in a society as complex as ours.

are too mushy and may be interfering with your ability to make your point (which I do follow somewhat and agree with somewhat).


On edit: I'm really not that wishy-washy and usually quite vocal in my opinions but that's what happens when you blur the argument with (what is essentially) non-content words.

I thought fiscal conservatism was just meant you want to balance the budget. After reading your essay and the above responses, I'm confused.

I have liberal social views. I'm pro-choice, pro gay marriage, pro-environment, for raising the minimum wage, etc., etc. I also think that the government should balnce the budget and use any surplus to pay down debt. If they have to achieve this by raising taxes and cutting government spending, so be it. The areas where I think they should cut spending if they have to are defense and Homeland Security. I think the whole Homeland Security idea is a waste.

So what am I?

Tell someone they are inconsistent, and they will redefine your terms either too broadly or too narrowly. People can keep redefining or further qualifying any term until any argument based on that term is proven wrong, one way or the other.

I was using the current general definitions of the terms. A fiscal conservative is one who believes in spending less money and trying to balance the budget, a social liberal is one who believes social change is necessary to bring about a more fair, just society. Pretty simple. Soon people are splitting Keynsian hairs and throwing in Locke's and Smith's defintions of "liberalism" as though they mattered, and no doubt soon someone will bring in the Latin or Greek origins of the words.

My point, poorly stated, apparently, was that you can't improve social equality by shrinking the government. It wasn't a pedantic argument over the meanings of labels, just an ideological statement that has been bean-counted into oblivion.

but there is a broad agreement among political theorists what

a classical liberal

a traditional liberal

a conservative

a socialist is

Most of these terms can be operatioanilized. Folks here are having a problem with fiscal conservatism because it's a more of a platitude than an ideology.

If I wanted free health care, free education, and free housing would I be a fiscal conservative just because I was able to raise taxes enough to pay for these programs.

Is shrinking military spending.

From my perspective, military spending has nothing to do with supporting social causes.

I don't know if I fit the various definitions above, but what I do support is a balanced budget, shrinking military expenditures to balance the budget and increase social spending.

There is no possibility of someone being a social liberal and a fiscal
conservative. The two are mutually exclusive, on both sides of the
equation.

I beg to differ.

Please allow me to pose a hypothetical question.

If one believes in liberal immigration policies, must one necessarily believe in taxpayer-funded abortion?

If one believes that the so-called war on drugs prohibtion policy is a bad one, must one also necessarily believe in gun control?

You essay is an excercise in the fallacy of the excluded middle. The nation is not composed of people who are either squarely in the Republican camp of socially conservative policy and capitalist economic policies, and on the other side socially liberal policy and socialist economic policies.

I know because I am one. I have no moral objection with two homosexual men buying the house next door. I know this for a fact because it describes my neighbors. Because I am not opposed to gay marriage (civil union or whatever you call it) must I necessarily be supportive of ever bond issue and tax hike? Of course not.

Let's examine the other side of the equasion, isn't is possible for someone to be opposed to the WTO and NAFTA but at the same time believe in social conservative opinions? Patrick Buchanan anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

This is a false dilemma, because there are alternative points of view. Views which, I might add, may be legitimate.

Such as the notion that it is impossible to make money in business without investing first. It isn't.

For example, using open source software and a great business model, it is possible to generate traffic through and affiliate program...which means you only pay promotion expenses when you make money. I don't want to get into the details here, but actually I'm in the process of executing on what I'm calling a "non-speculative business plan" which requires almost no investment and has enormous upside.

My point: if you see the world through such "conventional wisdom" as you do, you miss many possibilities.

I am also a Social Libertarian. I believe that we can reduce spending on government, ensure maximum freedom for people, and at the same time ensure that whatever we do spend on government goes to the good of society. This can easily be done if we stop wasteful spending on the military and corporate wellfare.

I guess I just don't believe in settling for your type of conventional wisdom. There are win-wins if you look hard enough.