How Can Liberals Understand Conservative Thinking?

The greatest imperative in understanding someone with political ideologies other than yours is to listen without interruption.

Right now, Republicans are having difficulty “understanding” each other. So, “the other party” is, for now, not so easy to characterize. However, the basic tenets of political ideologies in the U.S. answer just a few questions (that you can ask of Conservatives whom you know). For each question, understanding comes from asking the follow-up question, “What reasons do you have for believing your position?” Listen. Don’t even think about using a tone of voice that could be interpreted as accusatory.

• Is federal government or state government where the seat of governance and the provision of services best located? This is the argument of federalism vs. confederalism that has been part of U.S. history since states were trying to decide whether or not to sign the Declaration of Independence. This was the essential question of the U.S. Civil War. It is a war that is still being fought.
• How much of social welfare is the responsibility of the government (either federal or state)? Conservatives rightly point out that at the founding of the U.S., social services were not central to the U.S. Constitution and the responsibility of the government. However, the U.S. Constitution speaks to the rights and freedoms of individuals, starting with freedom of the press, of speech, and of religion. Major events over the past 240 years, such as economic disasters, have taught us that national security and national stability are strongly linked to economic stability— of institutions and individuals. Most social services came about as a result of economic disasters, like the Great Depression, or the impact of national and foreign wars.
• Do people in certain demographics of the United States have inherent obstacles to achieving economic well-being? If so, is there an obligation on the part of government to lessen these obstacles? There is the Horatio Alger portrayal of disadvantaged Americans as people who just need tenacity and hard work to achieve “success.” There is the cultural belief in the right to achieve “The American Dream” (owning a home, having food security, being able to take vacations away from home, etc.).
• Who is deserving of legal protection against biased treatment? This starts with the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause. But most Conservatives believe the law has gone too far. Protecting people in the LGBTQ community? Muslims? Hmmm.
• How much should the government regulate? For national regulations pertaining to the financial industry, the same economic disasters have driven the addition of regulations. The most recent motivation for asking this question was the Great Recession of 2007–2010. Sub-prime mortgages and other forms of very loose lending— not just in the United States— are credited/blamed for this recession (from which some industries and individuals have not yet recovered). In 2017, there seems to be a difference in interpretation of what happened in 2007. Get past those interpretations and understand a Conservative’s belief about if and when the government (and the semi-independent Federal Reserve) should assert itself into the economy.
• Which alternative to free trade is best for the U.S. in the long-/short-term? For international agreements, all political ideologies talk about “free trade” and no party actually wants it. The question requires some understanding of the global economy and the ways that trade agreements and trade, itself, are tied to political foreign affairs. So, the question to a Conservative is to understand which alternative to free trade they think the U.S. should pursue (and why).
• What are the pros and cons of the separation of Church and State? It’s difficult to understand at least the majority of Conservatives without understanding their beliefs about how religion (especially, Christianity) should influence such things as Supreme Court decisions and Acts of Congress. Noting the preponderance of pros vs. cons will tell you a lot.

In my experience and as a fundamental belief, there is no better way to understand the thinking of “Conservatives” than to talk with then (not at them). “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” (Steven Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)

Liberalism's Objection to Objectivism

Why are the ideological positions of Ayn Rand’s objectivism anathema to those committed to progressive/liberal ideological positions?

Objectivism is based on these kinds of beliefs (taken from a definition by Ms. Rand):

• Each person’s purpose in life is to achieve his own happiness.
• Each person is to be respected to the extent that he is individually productive.
• “Reasoning” is the only acceptable means of thinking, drawing conclusions, and making decisions. (fn 1)

Rand’s fiction elaborates on these convictions and extends them to implications for the inferiority of those who don’t have the capacity or inclination to achieve sophisticated levels of reasoning and/or high individual productivity. These inferior individuals are not worthy of the efforts of people who are the paradigm for objectivism, even if we ignore the imperative for each person to be totally responsible for their own well-being. Note, however, that most Objectivists judge individual productivity relative to what the individual has the potential to produce. The open issue is how one defines “potential.”

If you read Rand’s essays, you will see an irony: She was not a very accomplished rhetorician nor was she particularly competent at developing soundly reasoned arguments. I find her fiction to be far more articulate, with clearer questioning of the challenges of implementing objectivism in the larger society.

Progressive ideological positions that parallel the primary positions in objectivism could be stated this way:

• One important purpose in life is to contribute constructively to the collective good of the society.
• Each person is to be respected. Higher degrees of respect are to be afforded to those with an admirable quality of character: honesty, respect for others, compassion, humility, fairness, ….
• People should balance head and heart in understanding sociopolitical issues and other people. They should make decisions in the context of verified facts and logical deductions, but also in the context of compassion for others and categorical fairness. The latter are seen as fundamental— not needing logical arguments to justify their importance.

With the (passionate) progressive value of improving the collective good of people in a society, it’s easy to see why an ideology that prioritizes individual happiness over societal well-being would not be well received. There is a progressive corollary that improving the collective good is of ultimate benefit to us all, but that is not used as a rationale for valuing the improvement of the collective good.

The objectivist position that individual productivity is the measure of a man is insufficiently nuanced, if not outright wrong, to suit progressive thinking. For Progressives, many factors determine one’s productivity, and an individual’s contribution to collective productivity might need to be measured differently from the way that productivity would be measured for individually-produced results by a person who cares about nothing but his own happiness. Here is where the question of individual “potential” has a different interpretation than the objectivist/libertarian interpretation of the term.

Progressives make allowances for those who have had the cards stacked against them-- those with few if any options that would enable them to make more substantial contributions to society and to their own socioeconomic improvement. In other words, their realistic potential is hampered by circumstances that, practically speaking, are beyond their existing ability to change on their own. For Progressives, one responsibility of government and individuals is to assist those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged so that they can overcome their obstacles to equal opportunity. Objectivism makes no such allowances. 

Compassion and other sensibilities that are not in the purview of strict reasoning are fundamental to progressive positions. Reasoning in the absence of those sensibilities is vacuous.

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(fn 1) The metaphysical rationale for this tenet involves propositions about the existence of “reality,” the meaning of knowledge, and related metaphysical considerations. Since this is not where the opposition to objectivism focuses, there’s no need to elucidate further.