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A New Liberalism

Friday, December 10, 2004
Everyone says the Democrats need a new message, but most never present one. So here goes.

First, to analyze our enemy. To summarize where we've been so far, there are four basic elements of conservatism: cultural traditionalism, libertarianism, neoconservatism, and corporatism. I have already dealt extensively with what I think each of these types of conservatism mean and what I think is wrong with them. But each have aspirations and insights that are worth learning from, or at least that we as liberals have to come to grips with.

Cultural traditionalism has a respectable emphasis on small town rural life, and demonstrates the power of nostalgia on the human imagination. Any successful political doctrine needs to tap into the legacy of the past if its message is to resonate. Libertarianism has a respectable emphasis on personal liberty and rights, but more importantly on personal autonomy. It reminds us that the government is far too often something that happens to us rather than something we control. Neoconservatives instructs us as to the centrality of foreign policy and its relation to our long term security and prosperity. Liberalism can't be just about domestic issues. The world has become too small. And finally, corporatism at its best has a worthwhile concern not just with distributing economic gains, but actually generating economic growth. When the U.S. economy was hegemonic, liberals could just try to move money around and tinker with macroeconomics, but those days are over.

Second, to analyze our friends: liberalism has three basic constituencies. There are the populists, who are the historic heart of liberalism and are rooted in the anxieties are the working class. When united, they are always a majority of the voters. But they are vulnerable to right wing propaganda, and we have lost many of them because of they have become convinced that liberalism, big government, and pluralists are their enemies. Progressives are the middle class reforming base and the intellectual leaders of the party, but they have lost their intellectual creativity and have become far too technocratic for their own good. Finally, pluralists are dedicated to the politics of personal liberation, be it ethnic or cultural minorities. Unfortunately, they have often veered off into the dead end of multiculturalism, and have also confused assertions of moral superiority with political persuasion.

The above analysis indicates a single strategic imperative: liberals must win back the populist vote. This is going to take more than class warfare, although simple economic populism will need to play an central part in our strategy. We are going to have to identify who the enemy of working class America is, and that enemy is the Republican party and its corporate benefactors. And we are going to have to take seriously the problems that people have with liberalism and the reason they have been attracted to conservatism. But we are going to have to expand what we mean by economic populism. More on that in a minute.

First, liberalism needs to put its own house in order. We must move towards "liberal federalism" and stop thinking that the solution to every problem is a program designed by experts and run by bureaucrats in Washington. We need to craft policies that are designed to empower citizens as more than individuals (the mistake of neoliberalism) - that just makes them customers. Instead, we need to concentrate on reviving civic associations and developing institutions that ask citizens to act collectively. Political parties have always served this function, so part of this task is to re-organize the party to focus less on fundraising and more on participation. We need to return to the high rhetoric of civic participation and communal responsibility. It was always here that liberalism was strongest. Second, we need to articulate liberalism as a form of nationalism. This taps into the community spirit I was just talking about, but it also argues that what unites us as a people is far more important than what divides. The integrationists were right and the multiculturalists are wrong.

Liberalism needs to be reformulated so that it is less urban. We need to define a small town liberalism and a small business liberalism. To do so is to reinvent populism, or more properly to return it to a previous era. Populism is not just about unions demanding decent wages and benefits. It also looks to independent proprietors who are being driven out of business by big corporations, and seeks to protect small town life from the cruelest element of the market. Liberals can make a convincing case that they are the best ally of small town and small business America, and they must do so.

A new liberalism would also think more seriously about foreign policy, and by this I don't just mean the War on Terror. Yes we need to return to a more multilateral, "soft power" foreign policy. But we also need to realize that the line between foreign and domestic policy has been erased. Middle class economies will not survive globalization unless they are protected by labor and environmental standards. Middle classes are an act of political will, not the market. We need to define a global economic structure, but we can only do so in partnership with other industrial democratic nations. So we must create international institutions that unite the 1st world not just to combat terrorism, but to defend the middle class and promote democracy. The left really and finally needs to become an international movement.

Liberalism needs to create a development strategy. The corporatists have abandoned any desire to actually improve the U.S. economy: they are only here to make a buck. Our economic structure must be designed in a way that promotes the creation of new businesses (preferably small ones) that regain lost U.S. markets at home. We won't have a middle class if we don't have any manufacturing workers. Period. A development strategy need not take the form of simple protectionism, but the government can help through subsidies and favorable regulations.

Finally, liberals need to make tolerance a key political value. For too long tolerance has only meant "put up with me you bigot!" We learned from the successful integration of Catholics that the American people will set aside their prejudices if you a) evince respect for their worldview, and b) remind them that there are democratic principles at stake. It will be difficult but I think we can get there. And liberals need to help persuadable traditionalists understand that liberty is how you protect your values. If you try and impose them on others, they will to try and impose their values on you.

So that's my idea. It's not entirely new, and it lacks stirring language. But what it does do is define the political problem, develops key themes, and is backed up by substantive policy changes. What do you think?
Posted by Arbitrista @ 7:11 AM
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