It is common in political discourse today to identify every politician or country or idea as being either "left" or "right." The problem, however, is that either word - and, indeed, the full panoply of terms associated with either word - lacks any meaning whatsoever in today's politics. It could be argued that neither has ever any real meaning.
American politics seems to have been simplified to the point that, as one pundit has said, "There are 2.0 sides to every question." Republicans are conservative are the right. Democrats are liberal and the left. What's missing is any real sense that anyone has any idea what any of these terms mean. What's also missing is the simple fact that none of those statements are true. Republicans are not conservative; more and more today, they are radical authoritarians bent on changing America into a repressive, moralistic society where all opinions but their own are banned. And, unlike the code used by the Republican Propaganda Machine (otherwise known as the Mainstream Media), Liberals are not socialists. One of Liberalism's core beliefs is the maintenance of respect for the dignity of the individual by limiting the power of the government.
The use of these terms is especially confusing because even the small amount of sense and meaning that political rivals load on them has lost any connection to reality.
Conservatives are supposed to be the party of fiscal discipline, yet the last four Republican/Conservative administrations have run historically high deficits, and the last two Democrat/Liberal administrations have reduced or eliminated deficits. Conservatives are supposed to be the party of strict national interest and isolation from foreign interventions, yet both Reagan and Bush II launched lovely little wars for no good reason.
So what is going on?
The terms were originally used to describe the rival sides in the French parliament after the Revolution of 1789. In that context, the "right" was the label for people vaguely associated with aristocracy and royalists, and the "left" was the label for people who spoke in equally vague terms about representing "the people."
Leaving out years of boring and confusing history, we then come to modern American politics, where the terms were supposed to have been set in stone during the thirties and the seminal acts of FDR's presidency. At that time, the Republican/ Conservative paradigm was fairly simple. They were the party of business, and therefore the party that wanted Big Government to stay out of playing any role in the economy, so that businesses could make money any way they wanted, without worrying about workers' rights, union demands, or externalities like pollution or ethics. The Democratic/Liberal party, on the other hand, was the party that believed that government did have a role to play in protecting not only the weaker members of society, but the health of the economy as a whole.
Of course, all this was rendered confusing, to say the least, because part of the Republican electoral base was farmers - whose livelihoods have depended on government regulations and handouts created by the New Deal. In addition, until the seventies, an essential component in the Democratic electoral dominance of national politics was the Southern Wing of the party, which was dead set against promoting government power, especially when that power was used to destroy the Jim Crow racist system that Southerners believed in.
The modern political system was largely set in place by Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," in which he convinced southern racists that they had been betrayed by the Democratic party, and they should overcome their hostility to the Republican party (based on the role the Republicans played in the Restoration period after the Civil War) and realize that their interest in maintaining their bigotry (under other names) was better served by becoming Republicans. The switch of the Solid South has been largely responsible for the fact that Republicans have won five of the eight national elections since Nixon, whereas they had lost six of the eight before him (I leave out Nixon's victories in this calculation).
But we still have to get back to the question: What do these words mean? Of course, they have no relation to their original meaning from the French Commune. So what is it?
Republicans claim in their campaigns that the fundamental value of their "right-wing" politics is distrust of government. They want to limit the power of government, and in order to do that, they want to lower taxes. In the Republican caricature that has become the standard script in today's media, the essence of the "left" is that government is inherently good, acts in the public interest, and is a necessary part of the solution to any problem. Indeed, "left" is a standard term used to describe the communist, demand-driven economies that were our rivals through the later half of the twentieth century.
But one does not have to be a leftist to believe in strong government. One can, indeed, find little to choose between the "right" of Adolph Hitler and the "left" of Joseph Stalin.
The Austrian philosopher Karl Popper based his most famous work, The Open Society and It's Enemies, on the idea that there is, in fact, no difference between the utopian programs of either the "left" or the "right." Both depend on the idea that their programs will lead to a known end, namely the perfectibility of the human race and society. Both, in order to carry through to their noble ends, see no problem in creating untold death and suffering. The odd part is that Popper ideas were updated, particularized, and extended by Virginia Postrel in her The Future and It's Enemies. This is odd because while one disciple of Popper, George Soros, recognizes the threat to the open society that the Bush administration represents, Postrel, a former editor in chief of the libertarian Reason magazine, is a Bush supporter.
For R/C rightists, the evil of government is still intervention into economic activity. It is their dogma that an unrestricted free market is the one and only means to promote wealth and welfare. Any steps taken by the government to regulate or promote any corporate activity is to be denounced and prevented.
Those who saw the movie, A Beautiful Mind, however, may remember John Nash's key insight, that "Adam Smith was wrong." It is often the case that cooperation, not competition, results in a higher level of benefits to all. In addition, when it comes to what can be called network effects, as well as the simple act of balancing what would otherwise be absolute power in private hands, government is essential. Regulation is not interference in the working of the free market; it is an essential component of a free market economy.
For D/L leftists, on the other hand, the civil rights of the individual are paramount, and government actions to limit individual freedoms reach their limit when it comes to "legislating private, ethical behavior." Thus, efforts to render personal decisions - such as sexual behavior and even abortion (tied in the minds of many to sexual behavior) - are both unnecessary and un-American.
What this amounts to is that both are speaking past each other. But more importantly, it means that the usual manner in which politics is discussed in the media distort both positions, making the Republicans - who are trying to limit individual freedom by legislating morality and ceding power to corporate interests - look like the party of freedom, and Democrats - who believe in judicious use of limited, constrained government power to protect the rights of individuals - look like the party of socialism.
Let's put this is simple terms. The essence of conservativism - real conservativism, not the authoritarian tyrants in the White House today - is resistance to change.
Read John Dean's Conservatives without Conscience for a complete take on this. They believe that the past is the only true guide to wisdom, and that all new ideas are to be resisted. This is a formula for stagnation and death.
The essence of liberalism is that society is dynamic, fluid, and evolving; and that the prime goal of government is the protection of civil rights, prosperity, and public safety.
So what is my own belief? While I agree with no politician, I can perhaps best be described as liberal, so long as I am left to define liberalism on my own terms.
Conservatives believe in learning from the past. I agree, only I believe that the lessons of the past are contained in the mistakes that were committed by our forefathers. From the past, we can learn that racism and slavery are mistakes that damage everyone, not just the victims. From the past, we can learn that giving unlimited leeway to businesses and corporations to grab power and abuse both employees and customers leads to both injustice and economic collapse.
From the past, we can learn that attempts to mandate perfection are certain paths to tyranny. From the past, we can learn that resistance to all change contains the seeds of catastrophe.
So this I believe: the Constitution describes a wonderful system of dynamic balances between branches and levels of government. If one truly believes in the Constitution, then one must believe in the Ninth Amendment, which says that rights not listed in the Bill of Rights do exist, and that as society evolves, rights can and do expand. If one truly believes in the Constitution, then one must accept the Tenth Amendment, which says that there are no "inherent" powers of any branch of the government.
This I believe: a healthy, working economy and society is not a fixed, unchanging thing. It grows. When any organism stops growing, it dies, and the same is true about our society. We are not and have never been in some ordained, perfect state. Things are the way they are because that got that way. Things in the future will be different; whether better or worse is up to us.
This I believe: sometimes, the only way we can be better off if we are all better off. This is the lesson of Game Theory, or Network Externality, of Increasing Returns, of modern economics, of modern science. The only measure of a successful educational system is the health and dynamism of the economy it supports; when we try to rigidly define the content of an education with centralized testing programs, we kill the system of education that we all depend on, and will ultimately destroy our country. If we allow single or limited corporations to dominate the market in the name of deregulation, then they are no longer accountable for their actions, and we will destroy the prosperity we say we are trying to foster.
This I believe: given equality of opportunity, equality of outcome is unnecessary. In a world of inherited privileges, everybody loses.
This I believe: certainty is the enemy of knowledge. Doubt is the source of discovery and growth. Fear is the means by which freedom is destroyed. And the greatest threat to the welfare of the American people is our own actions.