What’s in a Name?
There’s been quite a bit of back-and-forth on the blogosphere about the Democrats’ rebranding of the Left. The debate centers around how liberal became a dirty word and the propriety of now using this other term, progressive (which Hillary Clinton explicitly favours).
The arguments aren’t important, but they are interesting. On the other side, Ross Douthat notes that this rebranding signals, “an epiphenomenon of a larger conservative ascendancy in American life,” and, “a blow for linguistic precision.” He can say this because, for him, the two terms represent distinct ideologies, and the shift in terms points to the adoption of not only the label but also the legacy of progressivism, which he politely points out has some dirty laundry (other conservatives have been not-so-polite). Jane Galt piles on with more problems the progressives gave us in the 20s and 30s. This rebranding isn’t giving the Left the clean break they want.
The response from liberal pundits has ranged from hostility, to incredulity, to indifference. In the succinct words of Ezra Klein, “What of it?” Matthew Yglesias comes closest to telling everyone else that their points are irrelevant, because progressive merely means what liberals now want it to mean. This will certainly be the case for the great unwashed masses, who don’t know and don’t care what a bunch of people back in the 20s thought — what will Hillary do about healthcare if she’s elected? Douthat et alia may try to discern the parallels all they want, but I suspect that all they are finding are coincidences (and probably weak ones at that).
So what is this all about? People talking past each other. The key insight here is that conservatives and libertarians are concerned about intellectual legacies and the historic threads of their ideologies. Liberals, not so much. This is why libertarians and their sympathizers are enthusiastically grateful for Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism on the one hand, and Democrats unabashedly claim Thomas Jefferson as one of their own on the other. Liberalism, or progressivism, will always be more about advancing convenient policies, rather than hammering down a coherent genealogy of political thought. The current collection of left-wing policy proposals have simply been rebranded, as glibly and significantly as an advertising campaign. One really shouldn’t read too much into this.
I think the rebranding constitutes acknowledgment of a Republican victory in the language wars. They successfully demonized the word liberal. Regardless of what it did mean or what it should mean, Limbaugh et al. made it mean something like a voracious taxer that hates white males and who will force abortions on your daughter when he or she is not encouraging her to have gay atheist sex with condoms.
Note: I believe that the upsurge in the usage of the term “progressive” began online, not within the Democratic Party, that some bloggers felt that 30 years worth of relentless attacks by conservatives had left the term “liberal” in tatters.
Note 2: I guess it should have been expected that the term “progressive” would get the same special attention from conservatives that “liberal” did. Though these days, and I mean REALLY, I’d think you guys should be more concerned about getting your own house in order.
Anyway, as a liberal who hasn’t thought much, if at all, about this particular distinction (liberal vs. progressive), I found Matthew Iglesias’ to appear more or less sound: lib=ideology, progressive=political coalition.
And as a liberal, I would certainly not sign on to Zach’s description of liberalism as being about “advancing convenient policies”
I rather prefer John F. Kennedy’s:
“What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label “Liberal?” If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But if by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”
If we are being so concerned here about exact definitions and all, I’d change this about Doug’s remark:
“I think the rebranding constitutes acknowledgment of a Republican victory in the language wars.”
to this:
“I think the rebranding constitutes acknowledgment of a Republican victory in the propaganda wars.”
Propaganda: “Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”
If HRC is suggesting that the Ds are moving towards Rush, Yes, Porcupine Tree, “…and Justice for All,” and other progressive greats, count me in.
If not, she’s just distracting us.
Pack, my money is on the latter…
I don’t think one can lay the dirtying of liberal entirely at the feet of Republicans. The Democratic Party, to its credit, has abandoned a lot of positions that were once termed so, because they were repulsive to moderates.
I also think that the new attack on progressive can’t be simply ascribed to the Republican smear machine. As I described in the post, some of it is a genuine attempt (however mistaken) by those of the Right to make sense of the rebranding.
Zach’s description of liberalism as being about “advancing convenient policies”
That’s not exactly what I meant; maybe I was ambiguous. The key words in the original sentence are more and rather.
I don’t think one can lay the dirtying of liberal entirely at the feet of Republicans. The Democratic Party, to its credit, has abandoned a lot of positions that were once termed so, because they were repulsive to moderates.
I agree, but not entirely. The Dem Party abandoned some positions to be able to chase after big $$ contributors (most recent example, the execrable Bankrupcy Bill).
“The key insight here is that conservatives and libertarians are concerned about intellectual legacies and the historic threads of their ideologies. Liberals, not so much.”
Eh? This doesn’t strike me as even _remotely_ true. There are thinking conservatives and liberals, not-so-much-so conservatives and liberals; and those in the first groups spend plenty of time thinking about intellectual legacies and political philosophies, and those in the latter groups, not so much so. I think that the only way you can even squint and pretend that a claim like the quoted one is true is if you deny that pretty much the entire contemporary GOP counts as “conservative”. And I can understand why one might want to do so. But then one can apply the same sort of reasoning to “liberal”/”progressive” as well, and the contemporary political types who march under that banner. And then what your claim turns into is the claim that most people, in general, regardless of political persuasion, don’t care too much about political philosophy or history. Which I think we can all agree is a “duh”-level empirical observation.
Maybe libertarians have, on average, a more robust sense of political philosophy and history — but even there, I’ve known plenty of people who at least _call_ themselves libertarians, whose “philosophy” goes about as far as saying “I want the government to leave me alone!”, and that’s it.
All of these terms are too old and have been used in too many contexts to be really meaningful. As usual with political discussion, you really have to define what you mean by a given word before you proceed. Liberal can mean, in the broadest sense, those who oppose the Jacobites, or it can denote those who sign onto the New Deal in the twentieth century, or it can refer to those who prefer Barak Obama over Hillary. It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And of course some of the most useful designations are employed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
I have to disagree with phil, for I would refer more specifically to a middle-brow sort of ideologue. Based upon my experience, conservative pundits cite their intellectual forefathers fairly often, and compare policies within the context of their movement history far more often than liberals. I mean, when is the last time you saw a liberal pundit talk about Rawls or Mills? This happens very rarely. Or maybe I’m reading an unrepresentative sample.
But it’s not like you hear conservative pundits talk about, say, Locke or Burke or Kirk that often, either. (I doubt Bill O’Reilly knows the first damn thing about any of them, for example.) And certainly some liberal bloggers, like Yglesias or Delong or Healy, talk philosophy and theory with some frequency. I think you’ve probably got a skewed sample of some sort.
I think you’re stretching things quite a bit to call O’Reilly either conservative or middle-brow.
And yes, Yglesias has mentioned Rawls recently, but that seems more the exception than the rule. I’ll still cop to a skewed sample, though.
This is a typical mistake made by the authoritarian right: that because they are authoritarian, so must be everyone else.
Of course that flies right in the face of what liberalism is, which is namely the position that a particular point of view, a particular ideology, a particular tenet could very well be wrong, even if it’s being held by members of one’s own tribe.
“Liberals” or “progressives” can’t engage in “rebranding” because there is no consensus, no single-mindedness, among liberals or progressives. We don’t like each other just as much as we don’t like you. We don’t march to the same space ghost, we don’t all pray at the same market altar, we mostly go through life disagreeing with each other.
Again, because that’s what liberalism is. It’s iconoclasm, it’s anti-orthodoxy, it’s anti-authority, it’s open-minded.
It’s liberal.
Zach: I’d be curious to know what you think are some of the prime exemplars of the relevant punditry factions. Though I think your claim as stated is wrong, I bet there’s some other claim in its neighborhood that is on to something.
Greg: Eh, I don’t see where “authoritarianism” has anything to do with anything here; and I’d say that conservatism today is beset by a plethora of different (and, increasingly, mutually inconsistent) flavors, which is why there is so much beard-stroking about just what conservatism _is_.
The key insight here is that conservatives and libertarians are concerned about intellectual legacies and the historic threads of their ideologies…Liberalism, or progressivism, will always be more about advancing convenient policies, rather than hammering down a coherent genealogy of political thought.
I suppose if we wanted to be nasty, we could refocus that observation and say that conservatives, like decaying aristocrats, are concerned about defining their worth by their proper geneology and the achievements of their ancestors. Liberals, like bourgeois merchants, are more concerned about where they are going.
Nick, I don’t think that’s nasty at all. In fact, it’s pretty accurate.
Authoritarianism comes into play because of the implicit assumption that “liberals,” like conservatives, can be expected to self-organize under an authoritarian hierarchy.
I.e. that “liberal” nature is such that “liberals” will seek out an authoritarian leader figure, or body of individuals composing such a figure. And that they will look to that figure for, for lack of a better phrase, “marching orders.”
Because it is only if you have a population receptive to marching orders that one could expect democrats/liberals to act as a corpus with regard to “rebranding.” That there is an identifiable corporate form to “liberalism” with members self-identifying as members of that corporate body.
Which is, as I said originally, antithetical to liberal thought. Liberals, by definition, don’t rally beneath any given flag, don’t accept a premise on faith, etc. Those are traits of the authoritarian right and do not map to the liberal left and are therefore inapplicable and unhelpful in understanding the motivations and agendas of those on the left.
Hillary Clinton, the individual, may be trying to shift her image from “liberal” to “progressive” (whatever those terms may mean) but she does not, she cannot, speak for the body of liberalism in the same way that, say, Ronald Reagan was able to speak for the body of conservatism.
Because liberalism, by definition, eschews having a “body.”
Greg, the problem with everything that you have said for the last two posts is that there is no broad agreement between conservatives, either on particular issues or on a basic philosophy. The difference between liberals and conservatives that you seemed so excited about in your July 31 comment is a difference that does not exist.
Liberals can re-brand, and they do this when large numbers of them reject the liberal label and call themselves progressives. They did the same thing in the 1990s, when many of them called themselves “moderates.” It is not a centralized decision, but it can still happen. Do you really think it is different for conservatives? Do you believe that there is an “identifiable corporate form” to conservatism? There is no council, or Supreme Conservative #1, over here, who tells us whether and when we are going to change our name. We do have people who appear on television and put their opinion in print, but just like everyone else, we only agree with them if we choose to do so.
Ditto to what Karl said (except I disagree about “moderate”, but whatever).