Conservatives venerate the free market and see smaller government as an end in itself. Liberals do not venerate government in the same way, and we do not see larger government as an end in and of itself. For us, everything works on a case-by-case basis. Should government provide everybody’s education? Yes. Should government manufacture everybody’s blue jeans? No. And so on.

Now, it’s true that conservative Republicans have done an awful job of limiting government. But that doesn’t stop Republicans from communicating their ideology. Everybody knows what they stand for. They’re for lower taxes, strong defense and less spending–even if they habitually fail at the spending part and have royally screwed up the defense portion of late.

But nobody knows what Democrats stand for because you cannot, and should not, formulate sweeping dogmas when you’re operating on a case-by-case basis. ~Jonathan Chait, The New Republic

Via Ross Douthat

Cross-posted at Enchiridion Militis

It must be one of the oddest consequences of the Bush years that the GOP has managed to associate the name of conservatism, which is by definition non-ideological and anti-ideological, with a universally applicable ideology that ignores all realistic constraints or considerations of casuistry, when it has always properly been the Freisinnigen who want a single standard and universal solutions for all problems.

Somehow liberals like Mr. Chait have gotten it into their heads that they do not espouse this same kind of blinkered universalism, even though they routinely determine policy positions based on abstract commitments to human rights, “justice” and “equality.” Unless Mr. Chait was being ironic when he said that liberals take things on a case-by-case basis, what he must have meant was this: “We take things on a case-by-case basis, and our response to every case is always the same.” See The New Republic‘s position on Darfur as one example of this predictable response.

The “case-by-case” rhetoric is another maneuver in a long tradition of liberalism’s pretense to neutrality and rationality: other people embrace inflexible ideological positions, whereas we liberals respond reasonably and according to what the situation demands. This fits nicely with the current climate that frowns on dogmatism and certainty: if the neocons haven’t much use for the “reality-based community,” liberals haven’t much use for anything rooted in traditional definitions of truth.

To the extent that this “case-by-case” approach may be true of Democratic politicians, it has probably been the fruit of opportunism. This is not to belittle approaching things on a more “case-by-case” basis, but to highlight that it is not characteristic of the liberal mind. It seems to me undeniable that liberals (and especially those who prefer to call themselves progressives) have very definite universalist commitments to which they expect everyone else to submit as a matter of right and “justice.” Failure to comply on the part of the insufficiently enlightened has historically resulted in liberal recourse to coercion or the sword. Regional and local variation on the single standard is permissible only if it advances some larger purpose of subverting traditional institutions and culture.

Mr. Chait is right about one thing–progressives do not see larger government as an end in itself as such (not, of course, that conservatives actually see small government as an end in itself), but as a means to eradicate hierarchies, traditions and authorities that bar the way to the “benevolent” despotism of liberal rationality and modernity. If time-honoured constitutional restrictions and protections become obstacles to the progressives’ progress, they will be done away with or reinterpreted to suit the times.

Government is the acid that destroys the dense webs of relationships and habits that make up local and traditional societies. As acid burns flesh, it will typically destroy living communities and living traditions the more it comes in contact with them. It is predictable that the conservative should want to contain this acid as much as possible and preserve his community against its ravages, while the liberal and revolutionary should want to throw the acid on the thick growth of long-established custom and venerable tradition to make way for his own model. To the extent that capitalism and market forces possess this same destructive and acidic quality, liberals of the 19th century embraced them and even modern liberals have accommodated themselves to these forces for the same reasons that they have embraced centralised and consolidated government.

This is why, as a general rule, liberals will always prefer to strengthen the government and conservatives will prefer to constrain, limit and check it; it is not an exhaustive definition of the difference between the two, rightly understood, but it remains an important difference. You can, however, reliably use it as a guide in determining who real conservatives are and who the fraudulent poseurs playing at being conservative are.