In a recent discussion about Wal-Mart with a very smart liberal friend of mine, I suggested that a woman working at a factory in China for low wages was choosing to work there, because the option was better than her other option of staying in the countryside and working on a farm. My friend thought my analysis was incredibly naÃ?Â?Ã?¯ve, arguing that I completely mischaracterized the woman’s action as an actual choice and was ignoring the power of larger, structural realities. Once the process of industrialization begins, my friend argued, there’s no turning back, peasants get swept up in the momentum of change and so it really is inaccurate to say they are exercising a true choice. She said she wasn’t necessarily touting the virtues of an agrarian economy vs. an industrial economy, but just drawing my attention to the bigger picture. We argued back and forth for awhile, but didn’t get anywhere. But I felt as if the conversation really got to the heart of what separates liberals from conservatives. Liberals view issues at the structural level, and conservatives view things at the individual level. Liberals, seeing problems as structural, think that the only solution is a structural (i.e. government) response, whereas true conservatives believe that government should back off, and allow problems to be solved by individuals.
I think this basic analytical difference is true for just about any issue you can bring up. When talking about racial or sexual discrimination, liberals view this as structural and demand a structural response in the form of affirmative action, whereas conservatives believe that a hard-working and ambitious person can overcome discrimination. Liberals believe that government intervention is needed to fight poverty; conservatives believe that it can be overcome by individual initiative. When it comes to criminal justice, liberals talk about root causes of crime, such as poverty, race, etc. Conservatives believe that criminals are in control of their own actions, and argue that by being tough on them, you change the balance of the cost-benefit analysis of committing crime, and nudge criminals into making the proper choices in the future. This is also true when it comes to fighting terrorism. Liberals often try to link terrorism to poverty and lack of education, but conservatives believe that terrorists are individuals who have chosen an evil ideology and will only change their behavior if they know that their actions will be countered by tremendous force.
I can go on and on, but I think you get the point. Also, I’d like to draw your attention to a recent essay, which touches on a similar theme. In it, Mark Helprin (who has pulled no punches in criticizing Bush over the past few years) argues that post-9/11, the Left’s resistance to fighting terrorism derives from its view that the collective is more important than the individual. He compares the passive Left to herd animals, because they want to move on from the 3,000 deaths on 9/11, without a fight. The gist of his argument is:
The nature of one’s reaction to aggression against one’s country will often be determined by whether one sees the polity primarily as individuals who must struggle with the imperfection of being bound into a collective, or as a collective that must overcome the circumstantial imperfection that it comprises individuals. For wildebeest thundering across a plain in Africa, it takes a village. The herd defends itself by sacrificing a minuscule proportion of its number and moving on. If the herd were to turn upon the jackals preying upon it, the jackals would be pulverized almost instantly. Nonetheless, if the price for the escape of ten thousand is the sacrifice of only a few, that is how it is done when the collective is paramount.
But animals like bears, tigers, and lions, that wander individually or in small groups, know that their survival depends upon how they fight, and their willingness to fight is so well understood that they are seldom attacked, whereas to a predator a herd in flight is a living contradiction of the maxim that there is no such thing as a free lunch”¦
After all, a herd of 100,000 wildebeest would neither miss just one of its number, nor even pause to reflect. But where the Left in all its wisdom gravely miscalculates is that the dead of September 11th were not wildebeest, and neither are we. That is why America, for all its failings and sins, has not gone down, and will not go down, on bended knee.
Read the whole thing here.
The analysis is welcome and captures the essence of the main difference between liberals and conservatives, but it is not clear the descriptive language is quite accurate. We know that structure drives behavior. Conservatives are not so much opposed to structure as favoring just enough to drive the proper behavior.
Liberals tend to be micromanagers, favoring elaborate structures that assume individuals need to be taken care of by an elite class of intellectuals. Their structures are therefore designed to taken every conceivable case into account, no matter how rare the exceptions or how expensive the implementation. Bureaucrats who enforce the structure for elites are not expected to make any judgments covering exceptions; when in doubt, a procrustean solution is just fine, and then it is up to elite liberals to complicate it even further.
Conservatives will tend to favor just enough structure to get the job done. The structure should cover the majority of cases, and the remaining can be dealt with by individuals using their best judgment. Those who take advantage of the structure can be dealt with appropriately, and we don�¢â�¬â�¢t need to complicate the original structure every time there is a problem. (Periodic review and revision will work just fine.)
Thus, let�¢â�¬â�¢s look at Affirmative Action in detail. Even in its most benign implementation the liberal assumption is that strict adherence to the �¢â�¬��structure�¢â�¬� imposed by Equal Employment Opportunity is insufficient. Liberals want employers to design, implement, and evaluate Affirmative Action Plans for recruiting, training, and promoting special classes (e.g., women & minorities), since employers cannot be trusted on their own to help the �¢â�¬��disadvantaged�¢â�¬� overcome barriers to their success, nor will sufficient numbers of �¢â�¬��disadvantaged�¢â�¬� make the individual effort. Of course, when Affirmative Action Plans are not doing the job fast enough, additional structure is needed (e.g., quotas).
The tax code is another great example: conservatives are continually lobbying to simplify the structure, whereas liberals . . . .