Naming Something Twice

In a recent post Kos tries to enunciate his vision of a sort of liberalism that is more attuned to the West. His basic notion is a good one - that we need to break out of our overly East coast, big-city liberalism and reach out to rural and western regions of the country. I couldn't agree more with his strategy. It's his execution that I wonder at.

Kos defines himself as a "libertarian" Democrat - one who really wants to defend individual liberties, and who realizes that big corporations are as much a threat to one's freedom as big government. I think that Ezra Klein is right when he says that libertarianism negates collective responsibility, which is what we should really be aiming for. But my critique is broader than this.

The fact is that there is already a word for what Kos is describing, and the word is liberal. Liberals are interested in defending personal liberties, are no friends to intrusive government, and have a healthy respect for the damage that the free market can do, left unchecked. Kos's original moniker of "Lib Dem" is freudian, because it is liberalism - not left-libertarianism- that he is describing.

The fact that there are those on the left that believe we need to adopt some lefty brand of libertarianism says a lot about how confused we are. It's one of the reasons that I have resisted the current fashion of calling liberal democrats "progressives." Progressives are upper middle class, good government, issue-oriented reformers who think that the solution to every problem is another bureaucracy by the federal government. While I am middle class (sort of), and I certainly believe in issues and good government, I think that progressive are just too enamored of the federal government and bureaucracy, and far too wed to an urban vision of the good life.

Liberalism is bigger than progressivism. While all progressives are liberals, all liberals are certainly not progressives. There are populist liberals, and pluralist liberals, and other sorts as well. To say that the left needs to adopt some form of libertarianism in order to say that we want to defend civil liberties and resist "big government" is to buy into the right wing critique of liberalism. It's long past time we reclaim and defend the the title "liberal," rather than hiding from it or dressing it up in new clothes.

P.S. (Via Suburban Guerilla) More evidence of the right's campaign to destroy and/or coopt the academy. Apparently now having an opinion disqualifies you from a high-level faculty appointment.