Essay by Ed Quillen
Politics – February 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
AS A COLUMNIST for The Denver Post, I get a fair amount of mail, and of that correspondence, a goodly portion begins with something like “You liberals….”
This always gives me pause, since if I’m a political liberal, liberalism is in worse shape than I thought. I’m not good at toeing that line. Just look at the issues.
Gun control? I’m against it.
Hate-crime laws? I oppose them, because they make a mockery of the concept of “equal rights under the law,” which should be our goal — even if we haven’t attained that yet. Whether you assault me, a gay man, or a black woman, or anyone else, the legal consequences should be the same.
School vouchers? I’d like to see them get a fair trial.
There was a time when I would respond to the allegations of my liberality by pointing out the above. But it didn’t seem to change anyone’s mind. Once a correspondent had determined that I was one of those pernicious “liberals,” then nothing I said made a whit of difference.
They’re not entirely wrong, of course. I’m pro-choice. Our environment is worthy of some protection beyond what the market affords. I’d like better mass transit and I’m horrified at how we’re dominated by autos, trucks, and highways. I’d like to see some national health insurance.
And I do enjoy making fun of those in power — who currently profess to be conservatives, no matter how much they act to expand the government after they promised to minimize government. If I mock their foibles and inconsistencies and hypocrisies, rather than adore and admire them, then I must be opposed to them, and the opponent of a conservative must be a liberal. Except that those liberals who assail me for failing in my duty to praise our public schools or support every environmental initiative insist that I’m a conservative peckerwood redneck.
Well, those who accept that logic are welcome to it. For my part, I think this attempt to divide Americans neatly into “liberals” and “conservatives” is worse than stupid.
So do some others. Not long ago I picked up a copy of a conservative journal, National Review, and saw an article with a title which was something like “Confessions of a Granola Conservative.” The author had some right-side politics, but he was also concerned about the food he ate.
In America, we tend to conflate attitudes and jump to conclusions: in this case, that anyone who frequents a health-food store must be a devout liberal, doubtless an environmentalist. Food can’t just be food; it’s political, and it presumably comes with some attitudes.
ONE ODD FACT in this set of assumptions is that environmentalism, as an American political cause, goes back to patrician Republicans who wanted to protect natural resources from greedy masses who might despoil them.
So is environmentalism a liberal or a conservative attitude? After all, attempting to “conserve” resources appears to be about as “conservative” as an attitude can get.
Indeed, it’s hard to figure out how to categorize many activities. Go back to the health-food store. The Salida shops promote local meat and produce. Is that “liberal” or “conservative?”
You could call it conservative; it’s supporting small business, “the backbone of the American economy” according to self-proclaimed conservatives promoting the Bush Administration’s economic policy.
You could call it liberal — since it’s also a way to vote with your pocketbook against the corporate food empires and genetically modified crops that provoke anti-globalism protests.
Or you could just call it a marketplace decision, and leave politics out of it. People have the right to spend their own money in ways that suit them, and perhaps they can do so without making political statements.
I try to avoid political statements every winter afternoon when I prepare firewood for consumption during the next 24 hours. When you’re swinging an 8-pound splitting maul with all the strength you can muster, it behooves you to focus on the chunk of ponderosa that will stay in one piece unless you hit it properly.
BUT OF COURSE the mind wanders (sometimes beyond the point of wishing that a chunk of pine was actually the head of some politician).
Wood-splitting is a liberal activity, since conservatives are shills for big business, and by burning wood, you’re depriving the distant stockholders of Atmos Energy Co. (formerly Greeley Gas, formerly the Salida Gas Service Co. which actually had an office in Salida) of returns on their investment.
The wood generally comes from our National Forests, a big-government operation and one that was denounced as a form of socialism a century ago when presidents were proclaiming forest reserves.
No, it’s a conservative activity. It’s personal responsibility and self-reliance, and those are conservative virtues. Combustion causes some air pollution, and liberals are against air pollution, especially when cleaner-burning natural gas is available. Further, getting firewood generally involves arboricide, and liberals are tree-huggers, not tree-killers. Even the removal of deadfall means possibly depriving some cute furry critters of habitat, to the dismay of some liberals.
See what I mean? It’s difficult to characterize even a routine cold-weather chore as liberal or conservative. I figure it helps heat my house and gives me some winter exercise. Plus, as last summer demonstrated, that wood is likely to burn and cause pollution anyway, so why not burn it where it will do me some good? Is anybody the worse off if the flames are in my stove, rather than across thousands of acres?
It’s pretty hard to characterize that attitude as anything other than pragmatic. My working environment doesn’t seem to fit in a liberal or conservative niche, either. It’s not smoke-free, which presumably means it’s not liberal, since liberals are always supporting more government regulations in the name of public health and protecting children and all that other noble stuff.
But I am working toward making it Microsoft-free. Last August, after fighting with a Windows 98 installation that kept crashing for mysterious reasons, I decided that I’d quit dabbling with Linux, and start using it as much as possible — for writing, email, web- browsing, etc.
It hasn’t been easy, and I’ve got a lot to learn. Part of my decision was practical: Why keep using Windows when it keeps crashing, and why continue learning about an operating system that is already obsolete? Even if we upgraded to Windows XP or the like, it would soon be obsolete, on account of deliberate design by a Microsoft which keeps trying to force us to purchase upgrades, whether we want or need them.
Similarly, part of the decision was financial: Linux is cheaper than Windows (even free, if you’re patient), and its core is stable. What I learn won’t become obsolete. That should give me more time to do the writing that pays the bills.
Part of the decision was moral. Microsoft was found guilty of anti-trust violations. Why should I support a criminal enterprise? Why should I trust a company that doesn’t trust me (as with the “activation codes” in the newer versions of Windows)?
Who is more worthy of my trust? Smart programmers all over the world who make their work open and available? Or a secretive company in Redmond, Washington, that wants every possible nickel out of my pocket?
But is that a liberal or a conservative decision? Liberals mistrust big business, and I distrust Microsoft, which is a very big business. Many conservatives don’t think the government should have prosecuted Microsoft for anti-trust violations, and that the company was just being punished, by a Democratic administration, for being successful.
So presumably you’re a liberal if you use Linux instead of Windows, except that in so doing, you’re gaining knowledge and increasing your self-reliance, while working hard and practicing thrift — aren’t those supposed to be conservative virtues?
THAT’S A MINOR MATTER, since I doubt that Bill Gates will miss the money I haven’t spent for Windows XP, but this confusion can easily extend to bigger ones, like the national debt.
When I was a kid, first reading newspapers, conservative Republicans always complained about the size of the national debt and that we should be responsible and reduce government spending to fit income. Liberals said it was important to fund health and education, even if it meant borrowing money.
I recall Ronald Reagan, who was certainly considered a conservative, campaigning for president in 1980, and eloquently denouncing the nearly $1 trillion national debt of the time. He pointed out that if it were assembled into a stack of dollar bills, it would reach the moon. But once Reagan was in office, the debt didn’t shrink.
Indeed, during the 12 years of Reagan and George Bush the Elder, the national debt went from $904.1 billion in 1980 to more than four trillion dollars in 1992 — that is, it more than quadrupled. And you really can’t blame those free-spending Democrats in Congress, because overall, they actually appropriated less than had been requested by the Republican presidents.
(Note, however, that whenever I point this out, people object and insist that the deficit was reduced by Reagan. IT WASN’T, but if you disagree don’t write to me or take my word on it. Check, the Statistical Abstract of the United States, or a World Almanac, or various government websites, and if you still don’t believe it, write to your congressman about how all of these publications are lying.)
The national debt only began to fall under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton (who wasn’t much of a liberal, either, for that matter).
ENTER BUSH THE YOUNGER, and he wants tax cuts even though the federal budget is growing, along with the deficit, just when it appeared that the beast might be under control. How can those policies be conservative and responsible?
My own dark theories about the politics of the national debt relate to class warfare. Consider that the higher the debt, the more interest the federal government must pay. Those who collect that interest are the holders of treasury bills and notes — that is, people of some means who don’t have to spend every nickel that comes in. Those who pay the interest are us working stiffs who can’t afford to contribute to political campaigns to get representatives and senators to write tax exemptions for us.
Thus, no matter how much a politician says he abhors a national debt, his rich constituents want one, the bigger the better, and we generally get what the wealthy want.
That is just my dark theory, though. The historical politics go back to Alexander Hamilton, who was America’s first secretary of the treasury, and Thomas Jefferson, who needs no introduction.
Hamilton wanted a powerful central government, and saw a national debt as the best way to get that. Jefferson wanted a weak central government, and labored mightily to pay off the debt during his two terms as president. A federal deficit, then, is a promoter of big government, so why has the deficit increased under Republicans who say they want a smaller federal government?
Got me. It’s another issue that doesn’t really lend itself to explanation in liberal or conservative terms.
Another big issue that doesn’t fit well is the War on Drugs. Here we’ve got a nanny government looking after our own welfare by telling us what we might grow or ingest, and practicing every sort of intrusion — ranging from spies to asset forfeiture — to advance those goals.
So it should be praised by liberals and denounced by conservatives? Except it’s hardly an issue at all, since few candidates have the courage to address it. I do admire those consistent conservatives who do denounce it, but alas, there are far too many “conservatives” like William Bennett or the Wall Street Journal editorial page writers who find nothing wrong with this repeal of at least half of our Bill of Rights.
As you can see, if you try to build a set of “conservative principles” (small government, individual responsibility, etc.) and a cognate collection of “liberal principles,” (big government, social responsibility, etc.), and then try to fit policies into those principles — well, you’ll find it more than frustrating, and you’ll start getting annoyed by this terminology that conceals more than it explains.
Try it with local issues. Liberals like powerful government, so presumably they like zoning and land-use codes. Except these usually increase housing costs, so these regulations hurt the poor that liberals profess to care about.
Further, zoning is generally just a subsidy to the rich. Which is cheaper for the hilltop mansion owner? To zone the unsightly nearby trailer court out of business, or to purchase that property to do with as he will? So is a subsidy to the rich something liberals should be supporting?
We could try the current hot issue in Salida — the adoption of the International Building Code of 2000. As it is written, it requires a $22 building permit for anything relating to your water supply. The way it reads, changing a faucet washer or replacing the ball-cock on your toilet could require a permit and an inspection and related government involvement — like finding violators and taking them to court where they can be fined and imprisoned for violations.
IS IT CONSERVATIVE to oppose this nonsense because it’s a growth in governmental powers? Or liberal to oppose this claptrap because it would increase the burden on people who already have enough trouble keeping a roof over their heads (and roof repairs, even minor ones like replacing a few loose shingles, could require a permit)?
Or is it just a personal and civic duty to oppose this obnoxious and onerous building code, unless it comes with an exception for minor householder repairs, like those under $500, or some similar limit?
I can’t say what’s liberal and what’s conservative. I don’t even know the politics of this magazine. I asked an old college friend once, a liberal Democrat — Bill Hays of greater Seattle, now in public relations and an occasional contributor of reviews. (His younger daughter, Annie, interned with us in the fall of 2001).
Bill said he’d have to characterize Colorado Central as rather libertarian, but suspicious of big business as well as of big government, so there really wasn’t a term for it.
That seems a fair assessment. And when you read the Colorado constitution of 1876, you discover that it was written by men who were suspicious of Wall Street, Washington, and Denver. So we’re probably following a Colorado tradition here — and damned if I know whether that makes us liberal or conservative. I just wish we could find some different words.
— Ed Quillen
