I think this is broadly correct. In the old days when both the political and cultural spheres were conservative, it was clear what and who was unorthodox. Today, different institutions are both very liberal and very conservative so you can actually say anything you want and be considered both incredibly conventional and outrageously pointed, depending on who is listening and where you are saying it.
For example, you can be a powerful high-ranking advisor to the President and spew all sorts of nasty racist garbage, but you can inhabit a world of friendly media and cheering crowds and you'll never feel encumbered by anything. At the same time, you can be a regular Joe at a regular Office and say something mildly eye-brow raising and be fired.
Choose your crowd and you can in fact say whatever you want and pretend you're both a victim and victor. Demanding that a crowd put up with you, well that's a hard sell.
I think there is a schism in people holding left-of-center (US context) views. I see liberals as placing a higher value on a consistent application of values and less emphasis on outcomes. I see progressives as more focused on outcomes than the means used to obtain them.
Cynically phrased, a critique of liberals from progressives would be that liberals are okay dithering and letting injustices stand. A liberal criticism of progressives is that they have adopted an “ends justify the means” philosophy. Additionally liberals might question whether the “ends” are good and on what authority that determination was made.
For much of my life it has felt that progressives and liberals were closely enough aligned to more be interchangeable in practice. But, I think the aforementioned cancel culture is one area where progressives see necessary change, while liberals see a sacrifice of ideals.
I’m not sure my definition of progressive vs. liberal is accurate historically speaking, but this is how I interpret the current left-left divide in at least the US.
> I think there is a schism in people holding left-of-center (US context) views. I see liberals as placing a higher value on a consistent application of values and less emphasis on outcomes. I see progressives as more focused on outcomes than the means used to obtain them.
> Cynically phrased, a critique of liberals from progressives would be that liberals are okay dithering and letting injustices stand. A liberal criticism of progressives is that they have adopted an “ends justify the means” philosophy. Additionally liberals might question whether the “ends” are good and on what authority that determination was made.
I think this is a very clear and succinct summation. It shows that both sides aren't exactly wrong, but they aren't exactly right either. That's what makes politics hard.
I'm kinda reminded of something I was taught about English Common Law: hundreds of years ago, it was basically the law in England, but it became so focused on consistent application that it ossified and failed to provide legal relief for many clear injustices. When that happened, someone could directly appeal to the King for relief, and out of those appeals developed a Equity, a whole different body of law. There's nothing wrong with consistent application of a process, but I think sometimes some people get so focused on it that they loose sight of the actual goal the process was meant to achieve.
many of today's liberals in the US are, in the parlance, neo-liberals, those who fled the obvious negative connotations of conservatism and its association with racism, sexism, etc. in the guise of conserving "values", but still sympathetic to those beliefs in private.
> neo-liberals, those who fled the obvious negative connotations of conservatism and its association with racism, sexism, etc. in the guise of conserving "values", but still sympathetic to those beliefs in private.
I think that's very much not what 'neo-liberal' means. I think that it means free-market liberalism — where 'liberalism' in the previous clause means 'classical liberalism,' as opposed to socialism, Communism or progressivism.
Many of the neo-liberals were, as I recall, leftists (for U.S. values of, anyway) who fled not conservatism but Communism/socialism as they saw that the math simply didn't work out.
yes, that's the historical context (free-marketization), but i'm referring to the more recent machinations of the last couple decades, as there aren't enough communists/socialists (in the US at least) to account for the rise of our current brand of (neo-)liberalism. that arose from nominal conservatives shifting away from unfavorable connotations. the free-marketization makes that transition easier ideologically.
Case in point: Southern California. This is the state were Reagan served as governor after all. Southern California used to be dependably republican, but no longer. But is this because of a fundamental shift (in population or beliefs), or just a lack of desire to be associated with the racial/social policies of the national republicans, with most non-racial views retained? I suspect the latter.
American politics are ridiculously small-c conservative across the board. Try and get the american left to buy in on any loosening up, if they catch even one tiny whiff of something a libertarian might also believe in it'll be seen as enemy action and the position must be resisted.
For example, I've heard it argued that the modern success of the LGBT movement can be traced back to Clinton getting a blowie and the dems deflecting from the perjury he committed by making it a public issue of sexual freedom/privacy. I'm not doing the argument justice here, but I tend to give it a bit of weight because the left is so comically bad at "sex positivity" that it's barely more than a new flavor of sex negativity with different boundaries.
Almost. What you'd call "conservatism" is just slowed-down progressivism, delayed by 10-20 years but otherwise indistinguishable, and both "sides" are squarely within the liberal political theory.
Nothing is being conserved. Today's conservatives are espousing values that sound the same as 2005's liberals, and are not even as conservative as Bill Clinton.
... as a result of decades of clear harms, demonstrated in court cases establishing case law that eventually becomes codified through legislation. The "conservative" values you mention are in fact regressive, and so-called classical liberalism is centrist, not progressive.
For example, you can be a powerful high-ranking advisor to the President and spew all sorts of nasty racist garbage, but you can inhabit a world of friendly media and cheering crowds and you'll never feel encumbered by anything. At the same time, you can be a regular Joe at a regular Office and say something mildly eye-brow raising and be fired.
Choose your crowd and you can in fact say whatever you want and pretend you're both a victim and victor. Demanding that a crowd put up with you, well that's a hard sell.