Editorial 4.1, January 2002, by Deirdre Helfferich Lurch to the Left Yours truly has been chastized for leading this paper in a distinctly leftward direction, to which I reply, Well then, you write! I’m not averse to publishing articles leaning in other directions--but I gotta have ‘em in my in box, and I won’t put them there: I’m not inclined to write about the virtues of our current administration (nor the last, for that matter) or the value of Pat Buchanan to our country’s moral fiber. This sort of commentary on the political leaning of the paper got me started thinking about left and right as synonyms for liberal and conservative. ("Liberal" is an epithet flung my way as well.) Liberal used to imply liberality with regard to the liberties the government could take in governing its people, i.e., the more regulation, the better, and the more explicit protections, the better. This view holds that revamping government is a good thing, and out with that old bathwater (and sometimes the baby, too). Conservative used to imply the opposite: a conservation of governance, conserves of law, one might say. Keep the old and don’t add anything new, preserve it with nostalgic sweetener for the memory, or, the less regulation, the better. And none of these newfangled amendments to the constitution, either. It’s part of each definition that has suddenly expanded in our day and age: conservatives don’t want explicit regulation protecting the fringes and minorities of society, and liberals think it quite necessary. The older values, implying trust in government on the liberal side, and distrust of government on the conservative side, seem to have switched in this area. Conservatives seem to think government regulation is just ducky, particularly with regard to limiting individual choices and freedoms (but not with corporate entities), and liberals seem to think government interference is just ducky, particularly with regard to protecting individual choices (but not with corporate choices). Seems to me everybody thinks government regulation is verra important, and there should be lots of it. So who’s on the right and who’s on the left these days? Guess it depends on where you sit. Back in the bad old days of the French Revolution, the French gave the world a new way to look at politics. The bloody part wasn’t new, but the left- or right-handedness was. People in the representatives’ chamber sat, literally, in a large arc facing a central speaker’s area. Republicans sat on the left side of the chamber, Royalists (while they were still allowed to keep their heads) sat on the right. Old guard and new, their politics were symbolized by where they parked their tushes. Appropriate, no? Right and left, conservative and liberal: these are slippery terms. One can lurch to the left and then stagger to the right faster than you can blink an eye, depending on what arena of politics is being discussed. Think gay marriage is okay? You’re on the left. Don’t like the government taking money out of your paycheck and think the IRS should be abolished? You’re on the right. You stoutly believe that it’s people’s skills and aptitudes that matter, not their ethnicity or country of origin? Left. Think affirmative action is a crock? Right. The problem with these terms is that one person can hold all of the above views, and it can get pretty dizzying switching from right to left fast enough to keep up. I suppose the true conservative is the one who wants absolutely nothing to do with modern government, and prefers that government that governs least. This includes the nutcase survival-in-the-outback types who prefer no government. Modern politics in the U.S. seems to preclude conservatism, unless one qualifies the term (e.g., social conservative, fiscal conservative, etc.). Likewise, I suppose that the true liberal is the one who thinks that government should have an active role in all day-to-day affairs, whether it’s the affairs of a corporation or the affairs of the unemployed fellow on the corner and the parson’s wife. Since almost everybody these days, not counting the anarchists and the survivalists, seems to want some kind of government regulation (particularly of the other guy), I’d say everybody’s a liberal. This view will, of course, give those right-wing hecklers the pip, and maybe, if I’m lucky, it will even provoke some of them into writing an article for the paper. | ||
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