January 15, 2008
by Clay Barham
Do our political labels square with how Americans believe today? Could the labels just as easily be the A party, the B party and so forth? For example, if we say we are conservative it implies loyalty to past principles. How far back do we go? If many believe FDR's ideals of over 60 years ago are the start, then they would be conservatives.
If liberals get their label from the classical liberals of the 17th and 18th centuries, from people like John Locke, Adam Smith and Frederick Bastiat, they would reflect more the ideals of libertarians of fifty years ago and present day conservatives. They do not fit, however. How, then, can we be consistent in describing our chosen beliefs, or should we?
American political and sociological traditions began almost 400 years ago. They were shaped by experiment and experience, best described by the Declaration of Independence and the state constitutions, the two Federal Constitutions and the Bill of Rights appended to the second constitution, under which we live today. America was a sociological laboratory. It fleshed out the way we should all live until defined by 1789, and refined later by the Civil War.
It was purely an American enlightenment made real. This is what most Americans see as conservative, i.e., traditions to be preserved. America established individual freedom, live-and-let-live, family and community prosperity, a free market, local and small instead of large government. In America, because our rights came from our Creator, not government, individual freedom was established. The Old World laboratory shaped, defined and refined its own ideals of top down rule, where the few elite, givers of rights, set the standards of behavior and economics for the many. This was the great divide between America and the rest of the world.
It still is.
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Ordinarily, we see conservatives, and early libertarians, as the people who support the kind of culture and traditions that grew in America, producing a prosperity and happiness not found elsewhere in the history of our world. American liberals have nothing in common with the classical liberals, and more with the Old World ideals of small people and large government, of the few elite managing the affairs of the many.
The labels liberal, socialist, Fabian, fascists, monarchist, Islamist, communist and modern democrat are synonymous with the political traditions of the Old World, not America. This is what we are fighting about in our political conflicts today. Some Americans are standing up for the purely American tradition of individual freedom, while the majority, it would seem, are in support of going back to the way it was in the Old World, where we are told how to live by a few chosen elite who claim to know best.
So much for being conned into surrendering our liberty through misleading labels, as that is what is happening.
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Clay Barham [send him email] has been a candidate for the California legislature and a stand-in talk show host for ABC. He was educated in physical and behavioral sciences, with a Ph.D. in sociology. He is the author of five books, with his latest being Foundations of Modern American Conservatism and Liberalism: The Roots of Freedom and Tyranny. Visit his website at http://www.claysamerica.com.
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