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Beyond Political Labels
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13593 |
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EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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4 / 1988 |
2,624 Words |
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Morton A. Kaplan
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The articles that are included in Politics after Reagan in the Currents in Modern Thought section this month illustrate how thoroughly different writers disagree with each other when they use the terms conservatism and liberalism. This should not surprise us. The so-called conservative revolution led by Ronald Reagan brought together different pressure groups that could agree temporarily on the label conservative in reaction to the policies of a Democratic government that was labeled liberal. This coalition may not extend beyond the next election as new issues and agendas come to the fore. I do not find the terms liberalism and conservatism very useful except as slogans designed to reassure political allies that we are--temporarily--in the same camp.
William Kauffman claims in his article that the neoconservatives are really Cold War liberals who got read out of the Democratic Party in 1968 and who have taken the Republican Party away from its Taftian conservatives. This charge hits close to home, although I have never joined any neoconservative organization. Like Ronald Reagan, my first vote was cast for Franklin Roosevelt. My first vote for a Republican presidential candidate was not cast until 1968. But it is a mistake to believe that only the label has changed. Even Senator Kennedy favors airline deregulation. And the Chinese have learned the value of the market. We have all learned things that have changed our perspectives. In any event, if conservatives become purists of any type, they will only assure their permanent minority status.
It is sheer nostalgia to long for Taftian isolationism. Indeed, it made little sense at the time. Until the Soviet system is changed, the United States cannot escape the fact that world freedom--and the liberties of Americans--depends on its national security policies. We may, however, disagree about the best way to preserve American interests. I thought that the overthrow of Iranian Premier Mossadegh and Congolese Prime Minister Lumumba made little sense. On the other hand, the overthrow of communist-backed President Arbenz in Guatemala and support for the Contras was and is desirable. We cannot allow Europe to be subjected to Finlandization or Japan to come under Soviet sway. The costs imposed by this geostrategic situation are massive and only a fool would welcome them. But only a bigger fool would believe we can ignore them without paying an even higher price.
It was a mistake not to support reform in the Middle East when the United States was dominant just after World War II, and we should have been more concerned about what kind of regime would replace Arbenz after we helped jettison him. I would have moved the fleet just off Haiti's coast before the recent rigged election. Our failure to care about our Vietnamese allies was one of the greatest wrongs in our fighting of the war and in our callous ending of it. Even if we must sometimes align ourselves with scoundrels and if we cannot right all wrings, it does not follow that democratic values have no role to play in our foreign policy decisions.
I think it is a mistake not to attempt to build a world democratic community with a court of human and political rights. I want to build an organization that will coordinate the economic policies of the developed nations. Do these beliefs make me a conservative or a liberal? Or are they merely the values of one who takes the values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as his guides to policy in an age in which political and economic interdependence
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