Contingency? Irony? Solidarity!

Young Ezra observes that "One could easily imagine a left win that's closer to the Dobbsian/Christian Democrat compromise of social conservatism with economic progressivism." And, as he says, it's easy to imagine a situation in which politics takes place on an axis between a party of Economist-reading elites and Dobbs-watching populists. Indeed, one often witnesses libertarians imagining just that -- see, e.g., Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies and Brink Lindsey on "liberaltarians."

Fortunately, the modern world actually provides many different examples of mature electoral democracies. I'm not positive about this, but my sense is that a survey of two-party dynamics would indicate that something roughly resembling the American pattern is the rule rather than the exception. In Spain, gay marriage was brought in by the Socialist Party. Labour in Britain is the party of the unions and the party of gay rights and multiculturalism. The Liberals in Canada are opposed by low-tax, traditionalist Conservatives. And so it goes.

Obviously, this would be more a topic for rigorous academic research than a blog post, but my sense of things is that there's some relatively "deep" reason that this configuration of political coalitions is so much more common than the alternative.

Comments

(Reposted from Ezra's because well, you actually ask the question)

I’d say what ties the parties together is Narrative. Not just philosophy, but a simple philosophy that can describe most of the world. These cultural beliefs define how you see the world and the principles you live by, and so will be pretty strong when you consider what politicians to support. And some people (but not all) will derive their narrative from what is the most self-serving and self-exalting.

Modern conservative narrative: those who are well off worked hard to get it and deserve it, and the biggest fear is irresponsibility, be it sexual/social irresponsibility or lazy people looking to get a free dollar.

Modern liberal narrative: those in power and well off are there largely because of luck, and the minorities who are oppressed or the poor who fell through the cracks should be taken care of and protected.

It’s a weak system of philosophy without much introspective – but it is a philosophy. It also aligns with certain coalitions, basically the more powerful vs the more powerless.

Posted by Tony V | June 15, 2007 2:31 PM

I have long thought that this deep split is between people who have an "expanded" view of "us" and people who have a constricted view.

To me this split makes perfect and intuitive sense, and matches most of what we see (the left is the party of race rights, women's rights, gay rights, the environment) but apparently it's not as intuitive as I imagine because when I've mentioned it in passing to friends, they attack the idea rather than welcoming it.

Posted by Maynard Handley | June 15, 2007 2:31 PM

AFAIK, historically politics has been conducted at various times on the "libertarian" vs. "economic populist" axis as well as on various other axes which are different than the principal axis of today and that other one.

I think how the divisions align that yield the two dominant parties of a given political entity depend on the economic conditions, etc., nu?

Posted by DAS | June 15, 2007 2:42 PM

What about Quebec? There politics appears to be between quasi-traditionalist, economically leftist Quebecois nationalists and the neoliberal Liberal Party...

Posted by John | June 15, 2007 2:42 PM

Welfare state is church's worst competitor; once you have a well functioning welfare state - who needs God?

Posted by abb1 | June 15, 2007 2:46 PM

> I have long thought that this deep split is
> between people who have an "expanded" view of
> "us" and people who have a constricted view.

We are all post-Hobbsians, whether we know it or not, and so we all agree that there are certain functions that society as a whole does and must provide for us (whether we want to admit it or not). So eventually we reach agreement on what that set of functions should be.

The difference to me is between those who, given that set of shared social functions, say

"everything else that goes on is the individuals' business and none of mine; I will neither interfere nor demand that others conform to my personal business"

and those those who, given the same set of shared social functions, say

"my home is my castle and I will do as I wish and shoot any gov'mnt revenuer who sticks his nose in my business. YOUR business, however, is still my concern, and I will use every tool at my disposal (government, social, and violence if necessary) to force you to behave as _I_ think you should behave".

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 15, 2007 2:51 PM

The liberals tend to be the ones that want to help both the economically excluded and the socially excluded. It is the same impulse.

Conservatives tend to think that these people do not need help: they should pull themselves up by the bootstraps (economically) and make themselves fit within the existing social orthodoxy (socially). Again, the same impulse.

Posted by blah | June 15, 2007 2:58 PM

germany has a bigger welfare state and stricter abortion laws than the united states.

Posted by razib | June 15, 2007 3:07 PM

And I think this thread echoes the earlier discussion of Rorty and liberalism.

Historian James Kloppenberg's "Uncertain Victory" (Oxford UP, 1987), a landmark intellectual history comparing and contrasting American Progressivism and European Social Democracy, teased out how these movements embraced and embodied a pragmatic (contingent, if you will) view of knowledge and truth and the ongoing human cultural enterprise; what they faced, over and over, were traditionalist, moralistic, foundationalist views of the world that considered them nihilistic--even as they worked to expand human freedom and lift the dead weight of pointless domination and repression off of modernizing societies.

Posted by elle loco | June 15, 2007 3:08 PM

Affordable Family Formation

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2005/05/08/affordable-family-formation-the-neglected-key-to-gops-future/

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 15, 2007 3:09 PM

There is nothing inevitable about the current political alignments of right and left. It's interesting that the same pattern repeats around the world today, but if we compare our political alignment to historical alignments we see many more differences.

For example, just 70 years ago or so we had the socially conservative segregationists aligned in the Democratic party with the populists/socialists. Meanwhile the Republican party, while not exactly anti-segregationist, was more socially tolerant certainly than it is today, and of course it represented moneyed industrial interests and was as anti-tax and regulation as ever.

If you go further into the past the issues under discussion were so vastly different than those we face today that it is hard to even draw parallels.

Posted by Rob Mac | June 15, 2007 3:12 PM

What blah and Maynard said. I would also add that India and Israel seem to adhere to this pattern as well. Not sure what to make of Turkey and Argentina though.

Posted by Reality Man | June 15, 2007 3:14 PM

social conservatism with economic progressivism."

William Jennings Bryan

Posted by rea | June 15, 2007 3:20 PM

Going back to the idea of the two-party system versus the multi-party state, my thought is that people still remember the post-war Italian politics that saw government after government form and collapse. Even today, we see in Israel the tiny parties that can throw 2 or 3 votes to one side - or withold those same votes until a platform is altered or Cabinet position offered. Although there is theoretically room in American politics for parties led by Dennis Kucinich on one side and James Dobson on the other, in practice people don't want that kind of tangle. Even Ross Perot only siphoned off enough of the vote to make Clinton's victory a plurality, thus enabling the Republicans to brand him ineffective from the start.

Plus, the commercials - they'd all sound like Monty Python.

Posted by ignoreland | June 15, 2007 3:32 PM

The natural economic alignment is the rich on one side and the masses on the other. The exact split depends on how the wealth is distributed in society.

The rich, realizing that they can't possibly win a majority on economics alone, rely on other means to build coalitions. Sometimes this is done structurally. For example, the "founding fathers" structured the Constitution and the underlying electoral mechanisms such that it would be very hard for the unwashed masses to control government (as they did in Rhode Island in the 1780s, to the great horror of the elites in the other States).

More common, though, is for the rich elites to align with the most easily fooled members of society in a "divide and conquer" strategy. Namely, the less educated, highly superstious, fearful, and prejudiced groups. The appeal is always based on an "us-versus-them" construct, in direct contrast to the "we're all in this together" construct typical of labor movements.

This means that the rich elites have to adopt positions on social reforms that they may personally not agree with or care about. For example, they'll take stands against abortions publically while quietly flying their mistresses to Sweden for abortions. Or they may agree to ban alcohol and to strengthen laws against cocaine while secretly partaking in both. In some countries the elites may condemn ordinary citizens to death for adultery while practicing adultery themselves on frequent trips to other countries.

So, while the leaders of the conservative party in a country (any country) may wish they could adopt a position of economic conservatism and social liberalism, they can't.

Posted by ahah | June 15, 2007 3:33 PM

What about Quebec? There politics appears to be between quasi-traditionalist, economically leftist Quebecois nationalists and the neoliberal Liberal Party...

Except there is nothing socially traditionalist about the PQ. They, after all, fought the last election with an openly gay leader who admitted to recent cocaine use. (True, that didn't totally work out for them.)

Posted by Pithlord | June 15, 2007 3:40 PM

Not sure what to make of Turkey and Argentina though.

Explain?

Posted by Freddie | June 15, 2007 3:41 PM

Maynard Handley -- I've believed in that theory for a long time: that the defining issue is the scope of empathy.

Posted by mz | June 15, 2007 3:42 PM

ignoreland: Judging all third party systems based on Israel and Italy is like judging all health care systems based on the UK. In both cases you would be taking the worst examples and assuming that they are all that bad.

Israel has a severe structural problem in their system. They allow any party with merely 1/120th of the vote to be represented. This fact, combined with the need to create coalitions, means that the extremist parties get all kinds of unpopular laws passed that they never would in any sane government.

By contrast, Germany (for example) requires that a party have at least 5% of the vote before it receives representations. (There is an exception for the people in the off-shore islands, but it is so small an exception as to have no relevance.) In addition, Germans get two votes: one for a party and one for a local representative. The election for the local representative is structured like the US two-party system, so the local representatives are mostly from the two major parties. Together, these measures allow third parties to exist and to contribute while also keeping the governments relatively stable. The threat that a third party may become more popular than the top two parties also keeps the top two parties in tune with the changing populace. The net effect is that the government does a usually excellent job of reflecting the wishes of the general populace. (Whether those wishes make sense is another question.)

Italy has different structural problems. I'm not as familiar with their government, but my impression is that post war italy lacked a national consensus on basic issues such as the role of government, so most of the key points that get written into constitutions (where they are intentionally hard to change) were left to be decided by each ruling coalition. That, too, is a recipe for instability. Germany, back when it was West Germany, had the advantage of being occupied by democracies that were interested in building a long-term success, so they brought in the best minds to write the new constitution, and wrote into the constitution the basic protections that still exist today.

Posted by ahah | June 15, 2007 3:44 PM

I think George Lakof is on to something with his idea that the two parties represent two metaphors of family life (Strict Father / Nurturing) applied to politics.

Lakof's actual political advice is neither here nor there, but as way to understand how the parties are organized I've found his theory convincing.

Posted by NickS | June 15, 2007 3:49 PM

In U.S. politics, federalism plays a big party in shaping party divisions. At any one time, only some States or localities have true, two-Party systems in play. Lots of States and localities are completely dominated by one Party or the other, and the division between the Parties, in, say, South Dakota, will break along very different lines than, say, in Connecticut or Alabama.

The Republican Party tends to be the Party of racism everywhere that's a hot issue, but, of course, racism in South Dakota is all about Native Americans, while in Alabama, it is about blacks; the history and dynamics are different. The Republicans are also the Party of wealth and business everywhere, but I suspect that that division is much starker in, say, Indiana, where the Chamber of Commerce will be solidly Republican, than it is in Connecticut or California, where lots of high-income professionals will identify themselves as liberal Democrats.

Nationally, Tony V's dichotomy works surprisingly well at the moment, but as Rob Mac notes, that's not the historical norm. Maybe it is a phenomenon of television, which also acted to suppress regional accents and the like.

It would be interesting to try to distinguish States and regions, and levels of government, where there are genuine two-party contests going on, for governorships or control of the legislature, and, then, derive a descriptive analysis of the implications for the evolution of the national Parties and their respective chances of securing a stable majority in the Congress.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | June 15, 2007 3:50 PM

The "deep" reason, I would posit, is centered on the great divide in "western" culture that has been manifesting itself time and again over the past thousand years, beginning with the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, all of which posed some inherent challenge to the dominate Christian-ized order that prevailed throughout the West at the time. Today, our political parties in Western democracies have essentially reformed along those deep, historical lines as those dynamics continue to unfold and work themselves out. Thus, it is a pattern reflected in all of those western European democracies you mention. The "culture war" in America is the most overt sign of this deep-level conflict since the hot conflict represented by the Reformation ended. It is a dynamic that has persisted for the past 500 years, while christian dominance has been on the wane and enlightenment ideas, philosophy, and ideals (and the science those ideals promote) have gained greater currency and institutionalization. While there have been ups and downs for both sides, of course, the overall trend during that time period is clear, with the Enlightenment having the upper hand as a general rule since the American and French Revolutions.

In a sense, I believe that this is why rightwing conservatives see their creationist views as "equals" to evolutionary theory, since they view evolution as the enlightenment/science equivalent of their creation theory. Restoration of christian hegemony in the West is essentially the stated project of the Christian Reconstructionists. Their antagonism toward science is based in the fact that science discredits their views (for example, geology proves the earth is billions of years old, not 10,000) and Enlightenment ideas challenge their orthodoxy and political paradigm (ie, freedom vs. democracy, questioning authority rather than viewing it as god-ordained.) In sum, this divide reflects a deep and on-going schism in western culture that originates in the two predominate worldviews present in the West.

Posted by Jeremius | June 15, 2007 3:57 PM

If this is a widespread phenomenon, (and I suspect that is) then my bet is that it will center on whether people in one group or the other base their world-view mostly on fear or on empathy.

Each of those two emotions will attract a different ideology to justify the feelings, and a higher scale on one of them will probably correlate to a lower scale on the other. All the philosophy/ideology/verbal-justifications are just verbal blather to justify which of the two emotions rules how a person acts.

Posted by Rick B | June 15, 2007 4:15 PM

I believe its to do with traditional power holding groups in a society and views on how change will affect these.
Right wing people see the society as something special that needs to be preserved from harmful changes by supporting the traditional power structures that have made the society special.
Left wing people see the society as something that can be improved by taking power from the traditional groups and passing some to groups who don't have as much power.
In America it has a lot to do with identity, poor people who identify themselves as white more than poor will be right wing (white people traditionally powerful, poor people not), whereas rich people who identify themselves as gay more than rich will be left wing (gay people traditionally powerless, rich people not).
If you think society is something to be improved from the past you are left wing, if you think it has to be preserved you are right wing.

Posted by Jake | June 15, 2007 4:21 PM

There's a lot to the theory that the rich man's party has to find ways to build an electoral majority for economic policies that don't really benefit a majority, and that imperative constrains political alignments, in a way that prevents economic populism combining effectively with social conservatism.

The key voter group would be right-wing authoritarian followers, to use Altemeyer's terms.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
The attitudes and worldview of the relatively authoritarian tends to cluster together in the same individuals,
1.) a propensity to be easily fooled by those willing to tell them exactly what they want to hear;
2.) a disinclination to principled, critical thinking, that makes them prone to holding fiercely to a host of contradictory bumperstick sentiments on political issues, a willingness to accept unprincipled governance as normal and fair, and an immunity to rational argumentation;
3.) a strong inclination to moral conventionalism and political narcissism that leads them to think that other people should conform to their values and expectations, even in their personal lives.

Authoritarian followers tend to be egalitarians, and to favor government social welfare, provided that no out-group benefits. So, racism tends to be real effective in immunizing them, as a group, against supporting economic progressivism.

And, as mentioned above, authoritarians have very poor lie-detectors, so they are quite vulnerable to corrupt populists and demagogues.

It is the ease with which a rich-man's Party can pick up the authoritarian vote in all but the most socially homogenous societies, which makes for the most commonly observed alignment of social conservatives with economic conservatives.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | June 15, 2007 4:22 PM

I think that we're basically just seeing fallout from the big marxist/capitalist debate of the late 19th/early-mid 20th Century. That was more or less the last time that there was really a big newly created attack on existing power structures. At the time, you had the capitalist types defending the traditional economic structure and radicals trying to put something new and (at least initially) untested into place, and this was happening throughout much of the world.

At that point, the Democrats and similarly aligned parties were really the party of Something New, and the Republicans and similarly aligned parties were really the party of Defending the Status Quo. The party of Something New was naturally more open to other breaks in the status quo.

Somewhere between the 1960's and the 1980's, the big marxist/capitalist question was more or less resolved, and the overwhelming consensus became "we're going to take a basically market-oriented base structure and then tack on a lot of caveats and marxist-inspired systems to that base." Now, we're just quibbling over the details exactly how that's going to fall out.

But anyhow, at the point where meaningful advocacy of substantially different economic systems from the current compromise ceased, both parties more or less lost the driving forces which caused the free-market/social conservatism and socialist/social liberalism coalitions to form. But there's a lot of inertia to those coalitions. Look how long it took for Southern conservatives to get over their discomfort with the Republican party -- more than 100 years!

I'd guess that the current coalitions have another 20-50 years or so of inertia left in them.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | June 15, 2007 4:24 PM

Ellen Willis' brilliant attack on Tom Frank in "Escape From Freedom" is very good and relevant here:

http://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/situations/article/view/30/26

Posted by mq | June 15, 2007 4:59 PM

I also have to express some doubt that working class people (presumably the audience for the economic populism) are all that conservative on social issues. Some are, sure, but that's true across the board: you can find members of the Religious Right with PhDs too. However the working class folks I know (and that's more than a few token ones) aren't big on church-going, they cuss like troopers, like their beer (and maybe their pot), enjoy a visit to a "nudie bar", most of them would get a pregnant teenage daughter an abortion, and they aren't even all that hostile to gays.

Posted by Jonf | June 15, 2007 5:09 PM

I think contingency as to why Dems are socially liberal, at least for now, is by far and away the best explanation though one does wonder if that will continue. The reason for this is that social liberals as they are defined today are rather new. There was no such thing as a social liberal as defined by what a social liberal believes as distinct from a social conservative in 1960, Martin Luther King was a social conservative the way we use the word now. It never came up that way, because everyone was a social conservative on the issues that divide social conservatives/liberals in 1960, except for a few beatniks and maybe Gore Vidal.

One wonders how long that will last though, given that a faction that really does care about the economically worse off should be socially conservative, if they really cared. Though, a party that was dominated by unionized govt employees and just wanted more 'customers' for their services, and didn't really care about much more else, might explain the current alignment. What sort of immigration policy would such a party be for?

Posted by j mct | June 15, 2007 5:15 PM

"At that point, the Democrats and similarly aligned parties were really the party of Something New, and the Republicans and similarly aligned parties were really the party of Defending the Status Quo. The party of Something New was naturally more open to other breaks in the status quo."

That's simply not true, if we're speaking of the early twentieth century (before Al Smith and FDR).

There were actually two, more or less unrelated, Democratic parties. One in the South (basically serving as a regional party and corruption vehicle) and one in the North (which was primarily a vehicle for inner urban corruption and appealing to ethnic populations). The Nothern Democratic party was more "liberal" than the Southern Democrats, but the Southern Democrats were extremely conservative, often violently so. For example, the majority of Southern Democratic delegates to national conventions in the 1920s were open KKK members, and would burn giant crosses during the Presidential Convention.

There was no particular sense in which the Democrats were the party of something new. A lot of the party's energies went to either defending the South's interests or carrying out the interests of Northern political machines. In that sense, the Democratic Party was carrying out a conservative program.

Many of progressives who got elected to high office in that era were, in fact, Republicans: Teddy Roosevelt, Robert LaFollette, and LaGuardia only being the most prominent.

Posted by burritoboy | June 15, 2007 5:29 PM

Working class people are like the rest of us, some are conservative on social issues, some aren't and most have no strong opinions and let themselves be swayed by the current zeitgeist.
I think the problem with trying to get a coalition between social conservatives and economic progressives comes down to the reasons why they hold these views, social conservatives don't want society to change, they want to keep things the way they were in terms of family dynamics and "acceptable" behavior and lifestyles, and to keep power in the hands of traditional fathers. Whereas economic progressives want society to change a lot by spreading the wealth away from rich white people to poor people and minorities. Its kind of schizophrenic to support radical changes to societies traditional structure in one area, while being adamantly opposed to changes in another area.

Posted by Jake | June 15, 2007 5:39 PM

"However the working class folks I know (and that's more than a few token ones) aren't big on church-going, they cuss like troopers, like their beer (and maybe their pot), enjoy a visit to a "nudie bar", most of them would get a pregnant teenage daughter an abortion, and they aren't even all that hostile to gays."

You're falsely simply equating personal behavior with political opinion. It's even a cliche now to note that strip clubs are far more prevalent in the conservative South, for instance (a region in which plenty of drugs are dealt, cussing is an art form, no shortage of teenagers getting abortions and with gay communities in the larger cities). Doesn't make the South less conservative. In fact, since the working class generally does not participate in politics, the politically active classes often intentionally contrast themselves to "sinful people": i.e. politicians often go much farther there in adhering to the Christian Right's definition of "good" than they do in other regions. And, since the people who vote are largely not working people, the political class of the region is more conservative, even if huge slices of the population is much more socially liberal than the politicians are.

Posted by burritoboy | June 15, 2007 5:42 PM

"However the working class folks I know (and that's more than a few token ones) aren't big on church-going, they cuss like troopers, like their beer (and maybe their pot), enjoy a visit to a "nudie bar", most of them would get a pregnant teenage daughter an abortion, and they aren't even all that hostile to gays."

You're falsely simply equating personal behavior with political opinion. It's even a cliche now to note that strip clubs are far more prevalent in the conservative South, for instance (a region in which plenty of drugs are dealt, cussing is an art form, no shortage of teenagers getting abortions and with gay communities in the larger cities). Doesn't make the South less conservative. In fact, since the working class generally does not participate in politics, the politically active classes often intentionally contrast themselves to "sinful people": i.e. politicians often go much farther there in adhering to the Christian Right's definition of "good" than they do in other regions. And, since the people who vote are largely not working people, the political class of the region is more conservative, even if huge slices of the population is much more socially liberal than the politicians are.

Posted by burritoboy | June 15, 2007 5:44 PM

I basically agree with you Matt, but just for trivia's sake, I can think of another exception: politics at the provincial level in British Columbia are run overwhelmingly on economic lines, and voting patterns are very class-based. The right-wing BC Liberals (which exist only at the provincial level and are not affiliated with the national Liberal Party) are probably the most libertarian mainstream party on the continent, and win big margins among Vancouver yuppie types, while the leftist opposition BC NDP has a very blue-collar populist base. This being British Columbia, they're not exactly socially conservative in the American sense, though they are historically not very environmentalist due to their forestry union links. In blue-collar BC towns provincial NDP/federal Conservative is a common voting pattern.

Posted by Jose Peterson | June 15, 2007 5:44 PM

Given the diversity of the lower-wage workforce, social conservativism makes effective economic populism impossible. Nathan Newman did a post some time ago at TPMCafe that sheds some light on this issue:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/22/9498/72119

In short, he argues near the end, unions abandoned an employer-sanction based immigration strategy in favor of universal employee rights. In order for pro-employee policies to work, they need to work across the board – otherwise employers can simply play workers off of one another. (Whether employer sanctions themselves are incompatible with across-the-board rights is another issue, but I’ll set it aside and accept the larger point that universalism was more effective than restrictionism.)

Let’s say Dobbs/Dobson wins in 2008. Their variant of “Sam’s Club Republicanism” wouldn’t be able to deliver economically for its constituents, as unions learned regarding immigration in the 1980s. So the people on the ground working for progressive economic change would abandon the false promise of the “populists” and pitch the proverbial big tent to all comers willing to band together for lower and middle-class rights. Thus would emerge an ethnically diverse, economically populist coalition… or, in other words, your standard Left party.

Posted by Dark Helmet | June 15, 2007 5:46 PM

"However the working class folks I know (and that's more than a few token ones) aren't big on church-going, they cuss like troopers, like their beer (and maybe their pot), enjoy a visit to a "nudie bar", most of them would get a pregnant teenage daughter an abortion, and they aren't even all that hostile to gays."

You're falsely simply equating personal behavior with political opinion. It's even a cliche now to note that strip clubs are far more prevalent in the conservative South, for instance (a region in which plenty of drugs are dealt, cussing is an art form, no shortage of teenagers getting abortions and with gay communities in the larger cities). Doesn't make the South less conservative. In fact, since the working class generally does not participate in politics, the politically active classes often intentionally contrast themselves to "sinful people": i.e. politicians often go much farther there in adhering to the Christian Right's definition of "good" than they do in other regions. And, since the people who vote are largely not working people, the political class of the region is more conservative, even if huge slices of the population is much more socially liberal than the politicians are.

Posted by burritoboy | June 15, 2007 6:01 PM

whoopsie! I guess I got an itchy Post finger.

Posted by burritoboy | June 15, 2007 6:07 PM

Conservatism is about hierarchy and control. Liberalism is about equality and freedom.

You pick a policy that tends to reduce the differential between more privileged and less privileged groups, and better than nine times out of ten, that's the policy liberals will favor. Conversely, pick a policy that maintains or increases the differential between the two groups, and that's where the conservatives will usually go.

The conservative mindset just plain wants to control or be controlled, and the liberal mindset just plain doesn't. You're not going to find a whole lot of people who want to, say, ban abortion but raise the minimum wage. Yes, they exist, but they're not a big voting bloc, and this is why: Because raising the minimum wage tends to empower the less powerful, and banning abortion tends to weaken the less powerful, and that is what it's all about.

Posted by Evan | June 15, 2007 6:52 PM

Re: It's even a cliche now to note that strip clubs are far more prevalent in the conservative South, for instance (a region in which plenty of drugs are dealt, cussing is an art form, no shortage of teenagers getting abortions and with gay communities in the larger cities). Doesn't make the South less conservative.

I probably should have added "except in the South" because I knew someone would bring up the South. My working class friends and relatives are all up north (or came from there originally) and what I said holds true outside the South, at least among people younger than, say, 50. Moreover up North the working class folks tend to vote Democrat-- somethiong to do with unions, you know, which the South has never been big on. But I do think the notion that working class people are social cosnervatives relies on a big stereotype, even in the South. It's been my experience that most Religious Right types are middle class and above, people who have the time and money (if only a little bit of the latter) to care about politics beyond the purely personal-- people, in short, who are willing and able to mind other people's business. Working class people are too busy earning a living and trying to make ends meet to worry much about things that don't impact them much on a personal level.

Posted by JonF | June 15, 2007 6:53 PM

burritoboy: I'm comfortable with using FDR (or someone thereabouts) as the touchstone for the beginning of economic liberalism for the American Democratic party. I don't think that that contradicts anything I wrote.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | June 15, 2007 6:54 PM

The reason that valuing growth over equality, American hawkishness, and social conservatism correlate today in the Western political world is very simple--the Soviets. The history of the 20th century was dominated by the Soviet Union, especially in the second half. The Soviets declared war on both God and Mammon, so God and Mammon fought on the same side.

Posted by Consumatopia | June 15, 2007 7:35 PM

Why you gotta refer to him as young, it's patronising.

Posted by cuchulkhan | June 15, 2007 8:55 PM

mq -

you found the article by the late Ellen Willis brilliant?

I found it incredibly shallow - every bit as one-sided as her characterization of Thomas Frank's thesis. While it is true that adopting economically liberal politics in and of itself will not be a winning formula, that wasn't Frank's argument. Rather, his argument was that adopting socially liberal, economically conservative policies is and has proven to be a losing formula. Any honest look at the last decade's politics can not help but see this as true.

Willis' thesis completely ignores the fact that the great flowering of social liberalism that began in the sixties flowered in the soil of an economically liberal regime that had flourished since the thirties.

While it would be reductionist nonsense to say that economic liberalism will in and of itself make social liberalism flourish again (the strawman Willis so eloquently knocked down), it is also nonsense to imagine that social liberalism in and of itself can ever bloom successfully in the economic desert that now exists. Social liberals can not ignore the galloping inegalitarianism that has taken root. It must be opposed. And pushing the social liberal agenda under the rug won't work either.

Rather economic and social liberalism must fuse, and this will entail some compromise - not all of which will be borne by only one side.

Posted by stivo | June 15, 2007 10:49 PM

As a West-Coaster, I would be 98.5% comfortable with the compromise that Brink Lindsey advocates ideologically, but for the fact that it makes no sense to compromise with the less than 8% of the electorate that calls itself libertarian politically. I think that the new coalition that liberals are forging is quite compatible with historically libertarian positions, but they're going to have to put a few more chips in the pot in order to see how this hand runs.

Posted by VasyaDC | June 16, 2007 2:32 AM

If you look at not just civil rights, but birth control, abortion, and women's right generally, then as recently as the 1950s the Republicans on average were somewhat more socially liberal than the Democrats (although there was a mix in both parties).

Posted by aretino | June 16, 2007 10:45 AM

"One could easily imagine a left win that's closer to the Dobbsian/Christian Democrat compromise of social conservatism with economic progressivism"

Many Islamicist parties in the Middle East fit this description and are quite successful.

You have to break down "social conservative" nowadays (unfortunately). Does it mean conservative on issues like gay rights, racism, or sexism, or conservative on basic issues like divine right of kings, fair trials, dictatorship vs. democracy, etc.? There are examples of parties which are socially conservative in the first (conformism) sense and not the second (authoritarianism) sense, including some of those Islamicist parties. These are usually economically progressive. There are also examples of parties which are socially relatively liberal in the conformism sense but very illiberal in the authoritarianism sense, including the parties of some dictators around the world. Dictators have come in both economically progressive and economically regressive varieties (does your dictator build palaces for himself, or public works for the people?)

Meanwhile, in the West, there are parties of other combinations. How do you account for the Liberal Democrats or New Labor?

Perhaps the reason the parties tend to line up the way they do in *modern electoral democracies* is related to the existence of *modern electoral democracies*. I guess I'm suggesting that perhaps the *Enlightenment fight* dominates all other issues whenever it is significant. Whenever there is an anti-Enlightenment or pro-Enlightenment consensus, the parties can arrange themselves in a more varied manner, and they do.

Posted by Nathanael Nerode | June 17, 2007 2:38 AM