My political philosophy

I changed my "profile" a bit to indicate that I am a "pragmatic liberal."  (I often make changes in its wording).

But what is that?

A "pragmatist" is interested in what works.  A liberal, the way we tend to use the term nowadays, is someone who is supportive of governmental action affecting the economy or society.  So, a "pragmatic liberal" is someone who supports governmental actions when they are effective and relatively efficient, when they can accomplish their objectives, when they "work."

There are at used to be "liberals" who supported governmental actions sort of on principle, whether they "worked" or not.  I don't know if we want to consider the Soviet Communists as a far extreme of "liberalism," but anyhow, they believed that people and crops could be improved greatly by changing societal circumstances, and that the improvements in acquired characteristics could be passed on genetically to offspring.  That belief formed the basis for official Soviet agricultural policy.  

This isn't true, of course, and it helped to ruin Soviet agriculture.  If I teach my son how to shoot a basketball, that doesn't mean that his children will be born with an "innate" ability to play basketball well.  But believing this falsity to be true was comforting to those who subscribed to Communist ideology.  There must be lots of other examples, but in my mind this is at least one of a strongly-held quasi-liberal belief that didn't work and resulted in great harm.

Or, consider the current US debate over health care cost containment.  An ideological liberal might believe that the federal government should attempt in some way to control costs, even if it could be shown that the methods suggested would very likely be failures.  But a pragmatic liberal (like I am) wouldn't.  Workability is the higher standard.

What about conservatives?  In times past, a conservative was considered to be someone who didn't want to change things much, wished to stick to the old fashioned tried and true, and in particular was opposed in principle to governmental intervention and involvement.  It is possible that there used to be "pragmatic conservatives."  For example, General and then President Dwight D. Eisenhower probably would be labeled a conservative, certainly compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he advocated the development of an interstate highway system because he considered it necessary to move the troops around the country in support of national defense.  That was a huge and very costly public works project.  Thomas Jefferson similarly was a "conservative" by the standards of his day, but that didn't stop him from undertaking a different huge project, the Louisiana Purchase, which lacked a clear Constitutional foundation, because he considered it necessary for America's future development.

How about now?  I don't think there are any pragmatic conservatives anymore.  Rather, the term "conservative" has come to be adopted by people who oppose governmental activity of almost every kind, whether or not it is necessary, and whether or not it "works."  While they like to believe that nearly all governmental efforts are wasteful failures, really in their view successful governmental programs are as bad or worse.  That's because a successful program gets people to more willing to accept the involvement of government in their lives, while the conservative goal is to minimize that.

It must be that this is a significant over-simplification.  (Among other things, it ignores foreign and military policy completely)  But it is what is going through my mind at the moment.

I would also add that I am much more a "pragmatist" than a "liberal."  Compared to lots of people I know, or have known, I'm not really much of a liberal.  How about you?

I asked my wife how she would place herself--I would say that she is quite liberal, more so than I am--but she said that she doesn't like to use such labels.  The only labels she really considers are the ones on foods at the grocery store that tell how much sodium an item contains, and also how many calories.  

Food labeling

Comments

[Snowy]

Yes, in practice people are all over the political spectrum depending on the issue, so labels are only ever of superficial use. I find the whole conservative anti government nonsense to be quite hypocritical. Governments can be entrusted with national security, but not national health. Crazy. I think the anti government propaganda is just a tool of the Elites to divert attention away from bread and butter issues that just might impact on precious profits.