David Michael Miller
One positive thing about the rise of Donald Trump (though it’s not worth it) is that it has forced us to think hard about political philosophy. And what we believe about politics is rooted in how we view human nature and the purpose of life in general.
Now, having written the least appealing opening paragraph in the history of blogs, let me get into some detail.
For most of my adult life I’ve been a casual liberal. Even as a political candidate and a public official I was never required to state my overarching worldview very deeply. In fact, it was usually to my advantage to avoid it.
I generally thought of myself as a liberal Democrat. My views on specific issues lined up fairly well with the mainstream of the party.
But the election of Trump forced two reactions. The first was the need to recognize that blood and soil nationalism, which most of us probably thought of as a permanent fringe movement in the United States, turned out to have the active or tacit support of just under half of all Americans. And the second was that the left-wing of the Democratic Party went storming off in the other direction, pulling the center point of the party with it.
I’m still stunned to realize that almost half of my country could vote for a man like Trump. I view his defeat as a moral imperative. And, yet, while I certainly don’t mean to equate it, I just can’t get on board with the policies and worldview of the Democratic left either.
The left has reacted to conservative populism with liberal populism, but I’m no populist of any kind. Populism is fundamentally based on resentment, on pointing a finger at the bad guys. So for the right it’s immigrants, intellectuals and others who don’t fit their image of traditional, middle-class Americans.
For the left, the bad guys are the one percent, big corporations and blue-collar voters without college educations who, the left claims, are not smart enough to recognize their own self-interests. The only thing you can say about bigots on the right is that they don’t even pretend to be tolerant. The left, on the other hand, is very intolerant when it comes to its insistence on tolerance.
So, in a practical sense, I find myself pulling for any of the moderates in the Democratic presidential field — Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick or even Michael Bloomberg. I’m closer to them on policy and I just think they have a better chance of winning. Still, I won’t hesitate to vote for Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders if one of them winds up being the nominee. Nothing could be worse than four more years of Donald Trump.
But beyond the politics of the moment, the Trump tragedy has forced me to sharpen my broader view of politics. Given the leftward movement of my party, I don’t think I qualify as a liberal anymore. Instead, I identify as a moderate and, while I can’t speak for all moderates, here’s what I believe.
Fundamentally, I’m a classical liberal. I believe in free speech, a free press, free markets, freedom both of and from religion, the rule of law and individualism.
Let’s take these things one at a time.
Of course no freedom is absolute. We live in a society and so we need to temper our behavior just to survive. So, you can’t shout “fire!” in a crowded theater if there is no fire, but I think limits on speech both in law and in our culture should be as minimal as possible. That makes me wary of self-appointed campus gatekeepers who want to decide for everyone else which ideas pass muster and which speakers can be shouted down or, worse, squelched before they even appear. If ideas are bad then let them wither through powerful, reasoned responses.
There’s also a view on the left that a truly objective free press is impossible, that one or another ingrained biases will find their way into the work of even the most diligent journalists. I reject that idea. In my experience I’ve worked with countless reporters both as a subject of their reporting and as a colleague. Being objective takes work, but it’s possible. Giving up on it is a huge mistake because it has resulted in the pervasive lack of trust in any reporting at all.
On the other hand, the right’s constant whining about the “mainstream media” and Trump’s accusation that the press is “the enemy of the people” is just beyond the pale.
I also believe in the free market, but not in an unfettered one. I think the free market has proven itself to build broad-based wealth and to improve the overall quality of life for everyone. Socialism just makes everybody poorer.
But capitalism, left to its own devices, will also produce results that run contrary to other social values. So, it’s right to ban child labor, limit the hours anyone can be asked to work without overtime pay, restrict air and water pollution and generally regulate the market in the interests of values that a raw free market won’t respect.
I also think unregulated capitalism tends to concentrate wealth and eliminate competition (the very essence of a free market), so resetting the game from time to time is necessary. But I don’t think a person is bad just because she’s had a good idea, worked hard and made a bunch of money.
I’m not a religious person. In fact, as a “none,” I can now count myself as the second largest “religious” group in the nation, right behind my former tribe, the Catholics. But I also think that for a lot of people their religion is a source of comfort and structure in their lives. As long as you’re not making human sacrifices or abusing children, it’s not up to me to mock or question what you believe in. All I ask is that you similarly respect my right not to believe.
The idea that nobody is above the law, not even the president, is one in which I remain on the same page as the left. In fact, that was one theme the House Democrats slammed home in their impeachment proceedings. It’s the Republicans who seem to have lost their way on this one. Once the law and order party, the GOP seems to now believe that as long as the stock market keeps climbing and taxes stay low, they’re fine with an outlaw president.
My biggest divergence with the left is on the issue of personal responsibility and self-determination. I believe that people are fundamentally responsible for their own lot in life. Of course, we don’t all start out at the same place, but all success cannot be attributed to group privilege and all failure cannot be blamed on group disadvantage. What America promises is that an individual’s success should be limited only by their native abilities and how hard they work. We’re not there yet, but we’re closer than we’ve ever been.
To be sure, we haven’t wiped out discrimination yet, but the left now seems to elevate victimhood to an absolute virtue while discounting personal responsibility for anything. That doesn’t make for a healthy society.
Altogether, my set of views doesn’t fit comfortably in either party these days. Issue for issue I’m as liberal as I’ve ever been and more liberal than most of the country. I’d still be a Marxist in Oklahoma, I suppose. But within the Democratic Party I fail some of the current critical litmus tests.
It seems to me that what we’re up against from both ends of the political spectrum is an attack on classical liberal values. The right attacks the free press, seems to believe that the president is above the law, and essentially wants to establish conservative Christianity as the de facto state religion.
The left wants to stifle any speech that it views as racist or sexist by its own increasingly stringent standards and it discounts the very notion of self-determination in favor of lumping people into groups based on skin color and sexual orientation. The right sees an unfettered free market in almost religious terms while the left flirts with socialism.
I don’t agree with any of that. I find myself at odds with the activist wings of each party, which puts me in a sort of no man’s land in the middle. Call me a moderate.