Last Wednesday, my fellow columnist (and my close friend) Gray Whisnant penned a column on the ills of the “socially liberal, fiscal conservative,” or, as Whisnant calls it, “the neoliberal.” Through his praise of social liberalism and his condemnation of fiscal conservatism, he heavily implies that the fiscal conservative, aside from being simply wrong on matters of public policy, practices “upper-class identity politics” and may be “indifferent” to war and poverty. Aside from presupposing fiscal conservatives to be incorrect (or downright immoral), he describes events or actions as “ideological” when that label is unnecessary, or even wrong. We should reject the notion that fiscal conservatism is wrong and immoral and caution against misconstruing the nature of ideology.
The insinuation that fiscal conservatives do not care about poverty is wrong, and even offensive. Contrary to some threads of contemporary liberal thought, there is no “right” way to tackle poverty. Liberals like to make the case that government intervention in the marketplace, hefty spending and redistribution are the best tools of combatting poverty. Conservatives often respond by pointing out that about two-thirds of poverty reduction stems from economic growth. Conservatives, relying on extensive statistical evidence, emphasize growth over redistribution as a means to alleviating poverty. As for the implication that fiscal conservatives somehow are indifferent to the plight of the poor, noted economist Arthur Brooks has demonstrated that conservatives actually donate more to charity than liberals.
Beyond the implicit ideological criticism, Whisnant misconstrues the nature of “liberal” and “conservative” ideology itself. For instance, Whisnant suggests that when the university condemns hate speech on Beta Bridge, or when commentators respond with outrage at an offensive comment on Fox News, this is a byproduct of “social liberalism.” Nothing could be further from the truth. To suggest that intolerance of hate speech is socially liberal (and thereby, is hate speech itself a product of social conservatism?) is an unfair classification. I would argue that opposition to hate speech is not inherently ideological whatsoever — to claim that it is liberal, and therefore claim the moral high ground for contemporary liberalism, is dubious.
Whisnant continues to assign ideology to unsuspecting targets through his characterization of the University itself as neoliberal. As evidence for the University’s supposed “fiscal conservatism,” Whisnant points out that the University “spares no expense” on the McIntire School of Commerce. There are many problematic elements with this statement (not the least being that it is highly conjectural to describe a business education as inherently emblematic of a political ideology), but his base assumption that the University “spares no expense” on the Commerce School is incorrect. This University is home to one of the nation’s best undergraduate business schools, but it is not as if the University is absorbing all the costs. In fact, the Commerce School charges students $2000 more per semester than the College, for both in-state and out of state students.
Whisnant also misses the ideological mark by expressing the simplistic notion that conservatives are for an interventionist foreign policy while true liberals are for a measured, neo-isolationist approach. This generalization overlooks important divisions within conservatism. As I wrote in my most recent column, important voices within the conservative movement, including William F. Buckley, opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many conservatives, skeptical of government’s ability to reshape the world in its preferred image, would support an essentially libertarian view of foreign policy, the view that Whisnant seems to advocate for in his column. Therefore, to place this cautious, non-interventionist foreign policy platform under the ideological umbrella of liberalism is again claiming some sort of moral high ground for modern liberalism, in addition to overlooking important nuances within the conservative movement.
The point of this column is not to call out Gray Whisnant. It is merely to caution that his column, characteristic of the ideological left, makes a number of dangerous assumptions that might not pass the smell test, most importantly the assumption that fiscal conservatism is somehow invalid or immoral. Whisnant’s column was written as a sort of call to arms to the moderate left, exhorting them to the far end of the ideological spectrum, and even accusing them of hypocrisy or indifference. I disagree with this analysis, though I do not find inherent fault with well-intentioned push for change.
But Whisnant’s column was not merely a well-intentioned push for change; it was also a casual denunciation of conservatism, from a policy and morality standpoint. Under this analysis, what is the reader supposed to make of conservatism? Where does it leave the person who believes (as I do) that economic growth, and not redistribution, is the choice method of alleviating poverty? To listen to some on the left, that would make this person heartless or immoral. And what of the social conservative? Is the social conservative intrinsically hateful? Some might argue yes, but the 35 percent of Americans who self-identify as socially conservative (about 30 percent self-identifying as liberal) would certainly take issue with that notion.
Whisnant’s column was not intended as a swipe at conservatism. But in utilizing many of the off-handed insults that Rachel Maddow and friends use to disparage conservatives, and in assigning ideology to widely-held beliefs, I believe that he — and more broadly, many of the contemporary liberal commentators who lazily and inaccurately stereotype conservatism — may have missed the mark.
John Connolly is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at j.connolly@cavalierdaily.com.
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