Nonideological Reasons for Being a Liberal
Up to this point, my aim has been to describe, as accurately as possible, the conceptual systems behind conservatism and liberalism, and to meet as well as possible the standard kinds of criteria for accuracy and explanation that I set for myself initially.
I have tried to put aside my own political views in doing the analysis; setting criteria for an adequate explanation was a way of forcing myself to do that. I hope that, in meeting the criteria for adequacy, I have provided an explanatory model that is worthy of my discipline, a model that is free of political and moral assumptions.
But I am not a moral relativist. I am a committed liberal. In the process of writing this book, I have had to examine, and therefore question, every point of my own beliefs. Every day, I have had to compare my liberal beliefs with conservative beliefs and ask myself what, if any, reason I had to hold my beliefs.
I have emerged from the process with a great respect for the coherence of the conservative position and for the intelligence and cleverness used by conservatives in articulating their views in a powerful way. Like many other liberals, I once thought of conservatives disparagingly as mean, or insensitive, or selfish, or tools of the rich, or just downright fascists. I have come to realize that conservatives are, for the most part, ordinary people who see themselves as highly moral idealists defending what they deeply believe is right. I now understand why there are so many fervently committed conservatives.
I also find conservatism, now that I think I understand it reasonably well, even more frightening than I did before. My new understanding of conservatism and liberalism has made me more of a liberal than ever. I find that I now can consciously comprehend my old instincts. I can give names to things that I could not clearly articulate before, things that were part of a vague sense of what was right. What’s more important is that I understand that political liberalism comes out of a well-grounded, highly structured, and fully developed moral system that I deeply believe in. That moral system itself comes out of a model of the family that I also deeply believe in. Now that I can see the unity and strength of liberal morality and politics, I feel more than ever that liberalism must be articulated fully, communicated clearly, and defended staunchly, not on an issue-by-issue basis, but as a whole, as a deeply moral perspective on politics.
It may sound as if my old prejudices have just been reinforced and that I am taking liberalism on faith alone. Not so. The process of thinking all this through has convinced me that there are overwhelming reasons to be a liberal that come from outside liberalism itself. I think I can finally put my finger on just why I have been a liberal, why political liberalism has always made sense to me, why it has always been not only an idealistic and practical calling but mainly a response to my most fundamental human instincts. What I have found, in the course of this study, is that there are in fact good reasons for choosing the Nurturant Parent model of the family, Nurturant Parent morality, and with them, liberal politics.
This book has been about worldview. But at some point the world must enter. Liberals and conservatives have different ideal models of how to raise children. Are there reasons to choose? Liberals and conservatives have different moral systems. Does it make any sense to compare moral systems? If so, on what basis can you compare them, and what results from the comparison? Liberals and conservatives make different assumptions about how people naturally think and act. Do we know enough from cognitive (or any other) science to decide the matter?
I believe that we know enough to allow us to choose in all these domains. It is our knowledge of the world that allows us to choose between worldviews. In each case, there is research bearing on the choice and in each case the answer is the same: There are good reasons to choose liberalism.
If I were to be asked to list those reasons and the bases for them very briefly at the outset, each in one or two sentences, here is what that list would be:
Reason 1. The Nurturant Parent model is superior as a method of childrearing.
Reason 2. Strict Father morality requires a view of human thought that is at odds with what we know about the way the mind works.
Reason 3. Strict Father morality often finds morality in harm; Nurturant Parent morality does not.
There are, of course, other real-world reasons to be a liberal. The environment is being seriously threatened right now, and conservative moves to end environmental controls, such as clean-air and pure-water enforcement, will only make things much worse. At present, 70 percent of the wealth in America is owned by 10 percent of the families. That means that 90 percent of the families share only 30 percent of the wealth. Since the rich have always tended to get richer, not poorer, the prospects are for a less than 30 percent share of the national wealth to be available to 90 percent of our population. That disparity is so large that it threatens the possibility for real prosperity for most of our citizens. Further conservative tax cuts for the rich will only make the disparity larger.
These and many other real-world reasons make conservatism dangerous. But there is no lack of competent observers writing about these issues. Let me turn instead to the three reasons I just mentioned, since the public is not widely aware of them.