[lapcat]

In the United States, terms such as "conservative" and "liberal" seem to be used primarily to describe whatever currently happens to be popular in the duopolistic Republican and Democratic parties. I'm old enough now to have witnessed both parties, and the definitions of those terms, morph into something unrecognizable to partisans of my youth. And the (morbidly) funny thing is that people today call themselves "true conservatives," for example, apparently with no recollection or recognition of the recent past.

My own view is that the terms don't signify real, stable ideologies but rather just give the pretense that the duopolistic political parties are backed by ideologies rather than by constantly shifting power dynamics.

[nradov]

Modern US mainstream politics have become weirdly like the ancient Roman "Green" versus "Blue" political parties that evolved out of chariot racing fan clubs. No consistent ideology or underlying theory of government, just blind support for your chosen side's leaders.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-roc...

[lapcat]

> No consistent ideology or underlying theory of government

> just blind support for your chosen side's leaders.

These are two different questions.

I'm not sure whether the political parties should have consistent ideologies. Even if they did, it's impossible for two or even three or four political parties to represent the diverse political views of over 300 million Americans. Each of the two major US parties have always consisted of shifting coalitions of interests.

On the other hand, loyal partisanship leads to the phenomenon that I described: inventing ideological terms as a kind of personal identity for the partisan, giving the pretense that their loyal partisanship is backed by consistent, stable views, when in fact the parties are demonstrably shifting coalitions of interests.

[bigbadfeline]

> I'm not sure whether the political parties should have consistent ideologies.

It's something extremely important, along with "underlying theory of government" which you missed to address. If you think boundless inconsistency and shapeshifting are OK, you better say it straight - if you don't, you need a theory of bounds and it better be consistent.

> it's impossible for two or even three or four political parties to represent the diverse political views of over 300 million Americans.

That's upside down, in fact, 99% of Americans adopt a selection from the views offered by politicians and parties as reflected by the media. The "diverse political views" don't fall from the sky, they are products of the political system.

> Each of the two major US parties have always consisted of shifting coalitions of interests... [ consistent, stable views are just pretense ] when in fact the parties are demonstrably shifting coalitions of interests.

You are conflating "coalitions of interests" with "political views", they are quite different. In order to start a discussion we must separately and clearly define the coalitions, their interests and their political views: if they aren't consistently defined, neither accountability nor even basic security can be achieved.

If interests are a sufficient reason for dishing out pretense pseudo-rationality, then the coalition that is best at pretending and manages to accumulate a critical mass of power will simply enslave those who were gullible to believe them. I shouldn't have to explain this in America but here I am.

[deltaburnt]

I mean, there's very specific reasons either color gets support from their voters. I wouldn't say all of those reasons warrant the same amount of fervor, passion, and loyalty that they do. But "blind support" is a bit reductive when for some people it literally means their rights being stripped away.

What appears to be "blind support" is people desperately clinging onto what tiny bit of representation they have. It's sad for both sides. It's Stockholm syndrome mixed with political pragmatism. It sucks, but the current political landscape in the US has entrenched itself so deeply in a local minima that people feel like they have to work backwards to make progress. Just see how any discussion of a third party is seen as a psyop to get that side to have a spoiler effect.

[bilbo0s]

As someone who typically supports a lot of third parties at the ballot box, I have to say that our problem is actually not people seeing us as a psy-op.

It's people seeing us as, at best, irrelevant; and at worst, a joke.

I've been voting since the late eighties, and have come to realize it is our lack of organization and, at times, our policies. Which in all honesty can be at once, foolish and bizarre.

It's difficult to bring the platforms of any new party in hand precisely because they are attracting people whose ideas are maybe not very popular in the mainstream parties. The mainstream parties have bizarre and foolish policies as well, but they've had 40 years to brainwash their voters. It's hard to have the same effect in, say, 2 or 4 years.

So you have to have a pristine platform and stick to it.

This is where as independents and third party supporters, we've repeatedly failed.

[OkayPhysicist]

Voting third party in a first-past-the-post electoral system is a coordination problem. If I, as an individual, have some grab-bag of political stances, with varying weights of importance to me, it is likely that some issues will become a matter of "I am willing to cast my vote in any direction that minimizes the chances that someone with the opposing view does not take power". For example, for people who strongly oppose a backslide into Facism in the US, the only real choice in the last presidential election was voting Democrat, because while there might have been third party candidates that would have been better, the Dems were the most likely opposition to that to win. Absent extremely effective widespread coordination, a vote for a third party increases the probability of an unacceptable outcome.

[csours]

> give the pretense that the duopolistic political parties are backed by ideologies rather than by constantly shifting power dynamics.

I feel like it's very easy to get angry about politics, so speaking clearly is difficult.

I would like to point out that the power dynamics do not always shift randomly, or by the will of the people (be that citizens at large, or party-line voters). The power dynamics have been shifted with intention.

Apart from that intentional push for power, we also have social media dynamics. It feels like online self-critique is always towards the extremes. Once someone becomes energized or activated on a topic, they may start to feel that even trying to understand other viewpoints will cause harm.

[bonoboTP]

People want to belong to a tribe. I think it's often quite a tossup where a young person ends up, depending on friends or whichever online circle accepts them best. It's also not rare for young people to flipflop between nominally widely opposing tribes before setting into one. People gradually learn all the opinions they are supposed to have on the various issues to truly belong to the tribe. It's not unlike learning the dogmas of a religion. It's much much more convenient socially to speak the same language and have the same cultural references and opinions to bond over and feel camaraderie about and curate a bubble of friends following the same opinion-setters, vs. creating one's own grab-bag idiosyncratic set of opinions that doesn't fit neatly into either well known combo-deal. You gotta support either this football team or the other one. People who start to lecture about how they like the goalie of the one team, but the striker of the other are just "not fun at parties", are kind of annoying and hard to relate to, especially online where people decide in a split second whether to upvote or downvote based on a fast pattern matching check to my tribe / enemy tribe.

[claytongulick]

There's potentially a genetic predisposition as well? [1].

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027161452.h...

[csours]

Before taking their current conservative role, one of our Supreme Court Justices was briefly associated with the radical left.

[AnimalMuppet]

In my perception, "true conservative" means "what the label meant in my youth, not what it has mutated to today". I think it is exactly a recognition of the past.

[lapcat]

I agree that this is the claim of self-described true conservatives. However, I think the claim is empirically false, and they do not actually follow what the label meant in our youth.

[AnimalMuppet]

I think some actually do. And some follow what they thought it meant, or what they thought it should have meant.

[lapcat]

> I think some actually do.

May I ask who?

> And some follow what they thought it meant, or what they thought it should have meant.

This isn't contrary to my claim.

[AnimalMuppet]

Me, of course.

(I mean that somewhat ironically - everybody would say that it fits them. But I also mean it somewhat sincerely.)

[lapcat]

Well, I was mainly referring to politicians and other prominent persons. I'm not denying that anonymous individuals exist who have remained consistent over the decades, but they don't seem to have much power anymore.

[skrebbel]

Yeah wow huh! It took me many years of reading HN to figure out that “liberal” means “left” in the US. In my (European) country, the word means nearly the opposite, a belief in individual freedoms, free speech, free markets, small governments and so on. It’s mostly championed by right-of-center parties. I’ve been confused many times reading comments that go like “these liberals who want to ban free speech” which, to me, reads as funky as “these nazis who want to protect minority rights” or “these republicans who want to reinstate the monarchy”.

It’s just, the word did a total 180 in the US and it’s super weird!

[bee_rider]

Realistically the mainstream Democratic Party is liberal in the sense that you use it; the US is a fundamentally liberal place, a lot of Republicans are as well.

Even the idea of “banning free speech” that you mention is implemented in a liberal fashion in the US. There are rarely calls for the government to actually ban speech via laws. The ground where that’s fought is actually “should private companies broadcast/highlight via algorithm the speech of individuals who say things I don’t like,” it is a formulation that pits the speech rights of the corporation against the self-expression of the individuals using their services.

The framing you quoted (“these liberals who want to ban free speech”) is often used by one side to pitch the other side as falling outside the traditional free-speech consensus.

[AnimalMuppet]

> The framing you quoted (“these liberals who want to ban free speech”) is often used by one side to pitch the other side as falling outside the traditional liberal consensus.

I disagree, at least a bit. I think "liberal" here is just used as "the bad tribe". It's not saying that they're not living up to their values, it's just saying that they're "them".

[bee_rider]

I can definitely see how what I wrote was unclear there, sorry. Inside the quotes, “liberal” was used in the sense that skrebble was using it inside their hypothetical quote, so, basically a faction of team-blue. Afterwards my intent was to continue using it in the way that he (outside his hypothetical quote) and I (everywhere) had been using it, related to the philosophy of liberalism. I’ll try to edit it for clarity, sorry…

[bonoboTP]

In the US they call that right-leaning version "libertarian".

[skrebbel]

Nah the thing we call liberalism is much milder than that. It’s like the watered down, we-do-trust-the-government-but-maybe-tone-it-down-a-little version of libertarianism. I mean the same meaning as eg the Economist gives the term.

I think maybe the term changed meaning in the US because for decades pretty much everyone agreed with it (no social democrats in sight, barring the occasional Bernie). A movement that ~everyone agrees with isn't much of a movement, is it?

[AnimalMuppet]

It's a movement that won - won so thoroughly that nobody even remembers there was a war. But that means that, since nobody's fighting that war any more, the label (which has "winning" and even "being correct" attached to it in peoples' minds) is now up for grabs for other movements that want to win.

[1718627440]

> It's a movement that won - won so thoroughly that nobody even remembers there was a war.

I don't think so. Some things might have been taken more or less for granted, but a lot of policies are now reopening that war again. See for example, the various threads about Chat Control in the EU recently on HN.

[vmchale]

> no social democrats in sight

The US already has social security, medicare, medicaid. It is often just plain worse/more brutal than Western European countries but the difference isn't a radical reimagination of the social order.

> barring the occasional Bernie

Western Europe has likewise not imagined any new government welfare since the 1970s.

[psunavy03]

Which is itself an ugly word because the Libertarian Party proper is mostly a bunch of kooks and cranks. So using it invites comparisons to them even if you only are proposing what the above poster was proposing.

[Gormo]

The problem is that these terms do signify real, stable ideologies, but the vast majority of people are superficial trend-chasers who don't actually adhere to any stable ideology, so misuse these terms to refer to whichever tribe they emotionally associate themselves with at the moment.

IMO, the current US administration seems to be the most left-wing in my lifetime, but contrived cultural wedge issues seem to have eclipsed actual policy positions in most public discourse, so gets called "conservative" despite its policies being almost the diametric opposite of what was called "conservative" 30 years ago.

[paulryanrogers]

> IMO, the current US administration seems to be the most left-wing in my lifetime

Can you elaborate?

[Gormo]

Tax hikes on American consumers and businesses.

Expansions in federal spending against growing budget deficits.

Government pursuing ownership or de facto control of private industry.

Aggressive use of executive fiat to pursue novel policies without clear legislative basis.

Federal interventions that try to direct or challenge state sovereignty on numerous issues traditionally outside the scope of federal authority.

Hesitant foreign policy that seems overly deferential to traditional US adversaries, especially Russia.

[esafak]

Trump is left of Carter, Obama, etc. ? How are you defining left-wing, exactly?

[Gormo]

Yes. Far to the left of Carter, who I'd consider a moderate conservative, and marginally to the left of the more centrist Obama.

I'm construing left-wing as (a) seeing an expansive role for the state -- and in the US especially the federal government -- as being a prime mover in social and especially economic matters, (b) willingness to use political power in novel and unprecedented ways to address perceived social and economic problems without being constrained by established legal and constitutional norms.

[OkayPhysicist]

You're confusing authoritarian vs libertarian ideology with left-wing vs right-wing ideology. They're two different axes, with debatable degrees of correlation. "We're going to give the government absolute power in order to best benefit everyone" comes from a very different belief system than "We're going to give the government absolute power to benefit the dictator, or my position under him".

Under your model of the world, Anarchists (the communist ideology) and Libertarians (the radical free market ideology) occupy the same place on the left-right spectrum. Which is... definitely not where any serious political theorists would put them.

[Gormo]

> You're confusing authoritarian vs libertarian ideology with left-wing vs right-wing ideology.

I'm certainly not. In the US, there is a significant overlap between libertarianism and conservatism, due to American political traditions themselves being rooted in constitutionalism and suspicion of centralized power.

Rather, I believe it is you who is confusing "conservative" vs. "progressive" political philosophies with whatever haphazard accumulation of policy positions have coalesced in the Republican and Democratic parties due to the tactical incentives of the immediate moment.

> "We're going to give the government absolute power in order to best benefit everyone" comes from a very different belief system than "We're going to give the government absolute power to benefit the dictator, or my position under him".

I don't think the latter statement applies to any particular political ideology -- rather, it describes the incentives of a particular type of functionary that exists under all dictatorships; all dictatorships are publicly justified by some doctrinal system aimed at improving "society" in some way, and all institutional systems consist of a mix of people pursuing the outward-facing goal of that ideology and those pursuing their own aggrandizement while paying lip service to that ideology.

And if your starting point is a constitutional system that's designed to avoid concentration of political power, and one that draws clear boundaries around the state and its role in society, then it's impossible to classify any ideology that aims to wear down those boundaries and use the political state to force any kind of social change as any sort of "conservatism".

This is the definition of radicalism; there are many flavors of radicalism, and those may be at odds with each other on account of pursuing different ideological goals, but the lack of regard for the established order them puts them on the same end of the left-right axis, only distinguishing themselves from each other on another, perpendicular axis.

> Under your model of the world, Anarchists (the communist ideology) and Libertarians (the radical free market ideology) occupy the same place on the left-right spectrum.

I don't quite agree with that, on account of the "radical free market ideology" you're attributing to libertarians not actually being a prescriptive ideology at all, but rather a defensive posture against other people's prescriptive ideologies. The communist "anarchists" you're referring to have a detailed vision for how everyone else should live, and aim to impose that vision through force, while the libertarians are fundamentally just opposed to anyone forcefully imposing any particular vision. So that pretty clearly puts the communists on the left and the libertarians on the right.

[esafak]

I've said all I want to say but I wanted to share this to ground future debate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

[esafak]

That describes everyone from Hitler and Mussolini to Mao. They all believed in big government, and wielding it internally.

[Gormo]

Yes, it describes everyone who aims to use unrestrained political power to reshape society, i.e. the precise opposite of what "conservatism" actually means.

[silverquiet]

Perhaps conservatism doesn't necessarily fit into a left-right spectrum neatly. I recently saw fascism described as a version of collectivism that caters to the right.

[esafak]

No, not necessarily. Conservatives condone social engineering as long as it agrees with their beliefs; e.g., to promote specific religions, and heteronormativity. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism#Beliefs_and_princ...

I think you are describing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_conservatism

[dragonwriter]

> IMO, the current US administration seems to be the most left-wing in my lifetime

Can you name even a single left-wing policy or rhetorical position of this administration?

> but contrived cultural wedge issues seem to have eclipsed actual policy positions in most public discourse,

“Cultural wedge issues” are about actual policy domains, and have a real left-right valence.

> gets called "conservative" despite its policies being almost the diametric opposite of what was called "conservative" 30 years ago.

30 years ago? The height of the neoliberal consensus when the Right leaned heavily on the cultural wedge issues of opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and affirmative action?

(I guess it was also just after a midterm election where the Republican Party, being out of the White House for the first time in a while and having just taken a Congressional majority after mostly being in the minority for a generation was also emphasizing restraining government and elected officials more than the Right normally has before or since, but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.)

[1718627440]

I do not live an the USA, but besides clear political goals, the anti-educational spirit is something that used to be common in the political left.

[Gormo]

> Can you name even a single left-wing policy or rhetorical position of this administration?

Tariffs. Deficit spending. Federalization of law enforcement. Hyperpoliticization of social questions. Government ownership/direction of private industry.

> “Cultural wedge issues” are about actual policy domains, and have a real left-right valence.

They've not been about actual policy domains until relatively recently. These issues have been marginal with respect to actual policy considerations for decades.

> 30 years ago? The height of the neoliberal consensus when the Right leaned heavily on the cultural wedge issues of opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and affirmative action?

GOP candidates in certain regions invoked various wedge issues on the campaign trail in order to put them over the top in elections for contested seats. Upon election, they then did nothing whatsoever to shift the actual policy needle in relation to these issue, and focused precisely on "neoliberal consensus" economic issues of the exact sort that the current administration is diametrically opposed to.

> but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.

But no, it actually is the "essence of conservatism" where conservatism is an actual political philosophy, and not an empty term that refers to the haphazard policy preferences of whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.

[dragonwriter]

> Tariffs. Deficit spending. Federalization of law enforcement.

None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

In fact, in the period where the GOP has been the more right-wing party, deficit spending has been associated more with them being in power.

> Government ownership/direction of private industry.

Fascist corporatism is not left-wing (state ownership as a proxy for and in the interest of the working class is a feature of some versions of leftist theory, but this isn’t something that Trump’s industrial intervention even makes a rhetorical appeal to.)

> > [...] the Republican Party, being out of the White House for the first time in a while and having just taken a Congressional majority after mostly being in the minority for a generation was also emphasizing restraining government and elected officials more than the Right normally has before or since, but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.

> But no, it actually is the "essence of conservatism" where conservatism is an actual political philosophy, and not an empty term that refers to the haphazard policy preferences of whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.

No, you’ve confused libertarianism/minarchism with conservatism. Conservatism, as an “actual political philosophy”, or rather a broad political orientation which is not a single unified philosophy but is conprised of distinct philosophies tending in the same broad direction, arose in response to and is exactly resistance to the downward, equalizing, leveling drive of enlightment liberalism.

The on-and-off rhetorical appeal to libertarianism by the Right especially when out of power is, exactly, a matter of “whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.”

[IAmBroom]

> None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

> In fact, in the period where the GOP has been the more right-wing party, deficit spending has been associated more with them being in power.

You're using circular logic: "You can't describe left wing as doing something the GOP does, because I define them to be right wing."

[Gormo]

> None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

These are quintessentially left-wing in the context of the past century of American politics.

> Fascist corporatism is not left-wing

Of course it is. It was deliberately designed as an alternative means for achieving socialist ends by socialists disillusioned with Marxism. It's always characterized itself as a "third way", but still one that seeks to radical change society through political force, and in opposition to those who want to conserve the status quo and admit change only through gradual development. The former is the traditional definition of "left" and the latter of "right".

> No, you’ve confused libertarianism/minarchism with conservatism. Conservatism, as an “actual political philosophy”, or rather a broad political orientation which is not a single unified philosophy but is conprised of distinct philosophies tending in the same broad direction, arose in response to and is exactly resistance to the downward, equalizing, leveling drive of enlightment liberalism.

It should be clear that in a US context, I'm referring to specifically Anglo-American conservatism, which does differ from other varieties in its devotion to particular forms of constitutionalism and to economic liberalism, i.e. the Burkean variety, and not to continental forms of conservatism which have had little historical significance in America.

> The on-and-off rhetorical appeal to libertarianism by the Right especially when out of power is, exactly, a matter of “whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.”

The problem is that you're presumptively conflating party with political philosophy even in levying this criticism. In terms of US presidents in my lifetime, I'd regard Carter, Reagan, and Clinton as conservatives, both Bushes and Obama as moderates, Biden as being on the center-left, and Trump as being on the far left.

Actual political philosophy cuts across party lines -- the parties themselves are just coalitions of factions that are mainly aligned due to mutual tactical opposition to the other coalition, and not by any shared worldview. The nature of these coalitions has far more influence on what rhetoric they employ on the campaign trail than it does on what actual policy positions they take once in office.

[bonoboTP]

What tends to be more conceptually solid is temperament and personality, rather than ideology. That is, things like conformism, trust in paternalistic authority figures, or instinctual contrarianism and distrust of authority, and openness to new ways of doing things, optimism about tweaking the knobs on society vs a more static view of how people are, etc., making it yourself (individualism and atomisation) vs focus on collectivism / community orientedness / family obligations.

For example, an old man with a conservative mentality in Russia may be nostalgic for Stalin and communism. Or someone who has a contrarian, disagreeable personality in a liberal American college environment may decide to become a monarchist or trad Christian to show the middle finger to the real authority figures in his life. And a conformist person in the US workforce would more likely absorb a corporate-HR-compatible (superficially?) progressive worldview.