A communitarian, a progressive, and an anti-corporatist walked into a bar…

Your Humble Blogger often gets caught up on throwaway lines in the middle of otherwise perfectly reasonable columns. The latest is from E.J. Dionne, Jr. in this morning's Washington Post, in which he says:

[Senator John] Kerry's speech underscores that the core divide in American politics now is not between liberals and conservatives, or between capitalists and socialists. It is between libertarians and communitarians.

Is this true? I think there are two significant scales by which to gauge political allegiances and principles at this time: social and corporate. Broadly speaking, there are coalitions of social conservatives and corporatists, and between advocates of tolerance and anti-corporatists. But the coalitions are not perfect, and the overlap is not exact. There are many people who are uncomfortable with some basic ideas of tolerance, and yet believe that the government should weigh in on behalf of the worker against the corporation. There are a good many who feel (wrongly) that the government shouldn't get involved in market issues or in bedroom issues. In fact, those people (both, and others who are in the middle of either slide) often decide statewide elections.

There are libertarians, certainly, and also communitarians. There are people who hold that a consistent philosophy is important, and apply that philosophy to whatever they get hold of (as y'all may have guessed, I am one of these, in my fumbling way). If Mr. Dionne had been working his way through Mr. Rossiter's Tenets of Conservatism, he would see patterns and moods, biases to take Mr. Rossiter's word, that are for the most part consistent with the actions of Our Only President and his cronies. To suggest that they are really libertarians is to grossly misread the nature of Conservatism, and the nature of libertarianism.

Similarly, to call Sen. Kerry a communitarian (or commie, for short) is to, well, turn a blind eye to his general support for corporate capitalism. Not that the junior Senator from Massachusetts is a conservative, far from it. He's a liberal. He believes, as far as I can tell, that the powerful have the opportunity to exploit those with less power, and that it is an appropriate task of the federal government to protect against such exploitation. He believes that equality before the law is a fundamental matter, and that it is an appropriate task for the federal government to protect that equality. He believes that equal access to education is a terrific thing, and that it is an appropriate task of the federal government to assist the states and localities in providing it. He believes in property rights, and in the separation of church and state, and in labor unions. I imagine if someone gave me a list of Liberal Tenets, Sen. Kerry would agree with most, if not all, of them.

I think that Mr. Dionne is really just looking for a way to win the upcoming election, and thinks that communitarianism is a good rallying cry for the center and the left together. I don't know if he's right about that, but I'm pretty sure his throwaway line is wrong.

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.

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