Political labels vs. political decisions

[thefuturemesozoic]

A few weeks ago, I was talking with someone who knew me from an organization that I might have joined, except that the organization subsequently imploded after several of its leaders were elected to office and could no longer participate, and there weren't enough people involved to hold it together. This person felt that the organization performed a valuable function in terms of bringing Progressives together across issues. Thinking about that conversation, I'm realizing that I don't know what it actually means to be Progressive. Maybe there are, in fact, good definitions out there that I haven't seen, but, to me, it seems like kind of a slippery term that can mean whatever someone thinks that it means. "Conservative" feels like a similarly slippery term that has become disconnected from the idea of conserving. It cannot be said, for instance, that Progressives want to see change, while Conservatives want to keep things the way they are. In practice, any given person will advocate or accept change in some contexts but not others, and, in fact, this is unavoidable, since we must sometimes make a choice between changing one thing vs. accepting change somewhere else. Rather, in the American context, Conservative is synonymous with "Republican," which implies generally holding the positions that Republicans hold, and "Progressive" is similarly associated with a subset of Democrats. I want to draw a distinction between ways of looking at issues vs. the labels that people would use to characterize themselves, since they are not the same thing. So, in this post, I will write terms such as "conservative" and "progressive" in lower case when discussing the former and use upper case for the latter. Given this landscape, it is worth exploring how we think about things and how we want to be thinking about things when making decisions.

When considering politics, I would say that there are a few ways of looking at a given situation. A liberal will say that the current approach isn't working well for everyone and should be tweaked in order to work better. A leftist would say that the liberal didn't go far enough, that the whole system is fundamentally flawed and that, at least in the long term, the goal should be to abolish the system and replace it with something better. A conservative will advocate caution, pointing out that tweaking or rebuilding the system could bring new problems that we cannot anticipate in advance, and change should be done only after careful deliberation. A reactionary will say that things were better in the past, before the system came into being, and that we should eliminate the system in order to roll things back to the way they were in the past. People tend to self-identify as being conservative or liberal, yet Conservatives are not always conservative, and Liberals are not always liberal, nor am I suggesting that they should be (more on that below).

In Austin, we have a Republican-backed ballot proposition designed to require the city to hire hundreds of additional police officers. The proposition does not raise taxes in order to provide funding for these officers, nor does it specify what should be cut from the city budget in order to fund these officers. Due to state law, and thanks largely to a recent change backed by Republicans, the city is severely limited in terms of how much it can raise taxes without a ballot referendum. The irony here is that, although the proposition's backers would tend to self-identify as Conservative, there are all sorts of conservative arguments that can be made against it. Is it wise to require the city to hire additional police officers without clarifying the impact that it would have on our taxes and on other services funded by the city? After the police, already the largest item in the city's budget, the next largest items are fire and EMS, suggesting that these could be on the chopping block. The firefighters' union understands this and is opposing the proposition. It may seem like common sense that more police officers will mean less crime, but such a correlation is not backed up by research. This referendum would set a bad precedent--in the future, people could similarly amend the charter to require additional funding for other causes that they support, resulting in mandates to fund various things without the city having the revenue needed to follow the mandates. In other contexts, Conservatives would advise extreme skepticism if someone tries to make a case that giving more money to the government is going to do anything to solve a problem. Even if more police officers would reduce crime, would increasing police funding be the best thing to do, given that there are other things that the money could be spent on, and that people also would prefer that their taxes not go up too much? Prop A supporters sometimes brush off concerns about the budget, saying that they are scare tactics. Some people seem to take it on faith that the city can find the money to increase police funding if they have to, without raising taxes or cutting other things that Conservative voters care about. When I look at local Next Door threads, some voters seem to be supporting it mostly as an expression of dissatisfaction with City Council. Making decisions in this way mirrors the critiques that conservatives would make towards liberals, that they perceive a problem and rush towards a solution, without carefully considering the impacts that their solution would have or whether their proposed course of action is the best solution.

Moreover,, contemporary Conservatives often hold views that I would describe as reactionary, and this is distinct from--and sometimes contradictory to--the point of view that change should be done slowly and cautiously. They sometimes want to withdraw from existing institutions--the UK exiting from the EU, for instance, and Republicans sometimes wanting to retreat from international institutions. In both cases, these Conservatives advocate change that could potentially have consequences that were not anticipated. The United Nations was created with the goal of preventing future world wars, and largely with the involvement of the US. Trump's campaign slogan was "make America great again." If he was coming from a conservative position of being cautious towards change, then his slogan would have been something closer to "keep America great."

Conversely, Liberals can sometimes play the role of conservatives. In Austin, some people perceive a problem in that the city is becoming unaffordable even to middle-income residents. As I wrote about here, some people, many of them Liberals, would call for caution in terms of allowing things that would bring change to their neighborhood. They are concerned about unintended consequences, that allowing more housing in established neighborhoods might help the middle class but accelerate displacement of existing residents, or that having less off-street parking would lead to more cars parking on the street, endangering pedestrians on streets that lack sidewalks.

Of course, I cannot tell people how to self-identify. I don't get to decide what it means to be a Conservative any more than any other person could unilaterally decide that. It is not, however, about an intellectual framework of taking a cautious approach towards change. If that is what Conservatism was, then it would look very different from the contemporary Republican party. It would require balancing one thing against another in order to preserve stability. It would follow the precautionary principle in terms of conserving the Earth's resources, a position associated more with Liberals than with Conservatives. It would necessarily take into account that the free market does not account for externalities. A conservative might be cautious in terms of not over-regulating the free market while also being cautious about the impact of greenhouse gases. It would also mean taking a cautious approach towards disruptive technology and business models, also a position that is sometimes associated with Liberals. At most, Conservatives seek to prevent change in certain contexts (family values or laissez-fare capitalism, for instance), which can mean accepting change in other areas.

To me, all of this suggests that we are not exactly divided along the lines of openness to change. Regardless of whether we consider ourselves to be Conservatives or Liberals, we are open to change in some contexts while wanting to exercise caution in other contexts. And this is as it should be, as not all situations are the same. So how, then, should we decide when change is needed and what kind of change is appropriate? This is not an easy question, and, at their best, both liberalism and conservatism have value here, as do more radical approaches. Sometimes a system doesn't work well for everyone and should be reformed. But reform could bring unintended consequences. It could lead to a bad precedent being set, or it could lead to change in other areas that the reformers didn't anticipate. Sometimes, reform isn't the best solution, and it makes sense to start over from scratch and create something new. Sometimes we might decide that we have made mistakes, making changes without realizing the consequences, and that the past has important lessons for us. But we should also be careful not to romanticize the past. It is easy to see the past with rose-colored glasses. If we believe that life was better back in the 1920's, when taxes were low and business owners could do as they saw fit, then we might want to keep in mind that the decade ended with the Great Depression and that Roosevelt's reforms were popular at the time, and, for several decades, there was largely a consensus that government should play a role in promoting the general welfare.

As time goes on, I realize that I don't like to describe myself with any of the existing labels, or, if I do, then I am essentially using "Liberal" as a synonym for "Democrat," for example. It simply doesn't feel appropriate to say that all things should be reformed, or that all things should be scrapped and replaced by something new. So what, then, is a good way to think about making decisions, if not the labels that I am rejecting here? I would say that the important question comes down to whether we are seeing things as they are and considering all needs and perspectives when making decisions, rather than simply defending our own tribe. Where we disagree, are we trying to understand the perspectives of those with whom we disagree? If we feel that change is needed, then are we advocating change with an eye towards the greatest benefit for all, including future generations? If we feel that something is fine the way it is, then would we feel the same way if we came from a different background? Of course, asking these questions doesn't guarantee agreement, nor does understanding and considering various perspectives necessitate agreement with them. But it is a good framework from which to start.