I come from a liberal family. I participate in liberal groups. I voted for Hillary. Yet by my definition, I am a conservative.
Political identity, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. In the public imagination, not without cause, conservatism is synonymous with an out-group intolerance for other cultures, peoples, and religions. This definition is apt for many. But the conservatism of Sarah Palin is unlike that of Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago. Lost in the noise of current discourse is the long line of conservative intellectuals. The usual conception of conservatism may not fit my politics, but a better flavor does.
Properly described, “conservatism” is the desire to conserve. It may be rooted in social prejudice and the …show more content…
Left or right, Americans, not always incorrectly, trace their economic woes to inept leaders for doing “too little” or “too much.” At the risk of simplification, the right claims the problem is the enabling of individual laziness. On the left, it is the excesses of unbridled capitalism. But these explanations have the wrong idea. Most poor and middle-class are, in fact, hard workers. And capitalism is not the only economic system to know poverty. The better explanation is not some combination of the two, but neither. It is false that people, and therefore institutions, are at fault. By and large, it belongs belongs to the impersonal reality of a world of scarce resources. Our institutions’ shortcomings reveal their fallibility, not their failure. Indeed, Western institutions have been so successful that prosperity is used as the baseline for comparison. When people see poverty, they see society’s failure. But when poverty is the norm of human history, the proper paradigm is to look at wealth and see society’s success. This does not mean that the poor are poor by their own doing. Nor does it mean that the flimsy social safety net is adequate. But it does mean that a bit of redistribution can patch it up, and that our current course–which increases wealth, leaving more available to redistribute–is mostly the right one. When seen this way, our institutions are well worth
Political identity, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. In the public imagination, not without cause, conservatism is synonymous with an out-group intolerance for other cultures, peoples, and religions. This definition is apt for many. But the conservatism of Sarah Palin is unlike that of Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago. Lost in the noise of current discourse is the long line of conservative intellectuals. The usual conception of conservatism may not fit my politics, but a better flavor does.
Properly described, “conservatism” is the desire to conserve. It may be rooted in social prejudice and the …show more content…
Left or right, Americans, not always incorrectly, trace their economic woes to inept leaders for doing “too little” or “too much.” At the risk of simplification, the right claims the problem is the enabling of individual laziness. On the left, it is the excesses of unbridled capitalism. But these explanations have the wrong idea. Most poor and middle-class are, in fact, hard workers. And capitalism is not the only economic system to know poverty. The better explanation is not some combination of the two, but neither. It is false that people, and therefore institutions, are at fault. By and large, it belongs belongs to the impersonal reality of a world of scarce resources. Our institutions’ shortcomings reveal their fallibility, not their failure. Indeed, Western institutions have been so successful that prosperity is used as the baseline for comparison. When people see poverty, they see society’s failure. But when poverty is the norm of human history, the proper paradigm is to look at wealth and see society’s success. This does not mean that the poor are poor by their own doing. Nor does it mean that the flimsy social safety net is adequate. But it does mean that a bit of redistribution can patch it up, and that our current course–which increases wealth, leaving more available to redistribute–is mostly the right one. When seen this way, our institutions are well worth