#564: Are You a Conservative or a Liberal?

  

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., September 20, 2025

I always considered myself a non-partisan moderate conservative, but after Charlie Kirk was described as a conservative who supported Donald Trump, I’m clearly not that kind of conservative.  Those who support Trump are committed to support his corrupt political agenda rather than providing for the common good, and are not true conservatives.

Until Trump’s domination of the Republican Party, there were conservatives and liberals in both parties who supported both liberal and conservative issues that provided for the common good.  But with partisan polarization voters are limited to choosing between Republicans or Democrats, and have no real choice for voters beyond party lines.  

David Brooks recently wrote, Why I Am not a Liberal, and I share his support of the maxim of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that “the central conservative truth in politics is that culture, not politics determines the success of a society.”  Brooks also said that the central liberal truth is similar, but different: Democratic politics can change culture and save democracy from itself.”

The truth is that the politics of a majority in a democracy reflects their cultural values and preferences.  The Democratic preference for cash benefits to the poor will always be needed, but should be limited since they don’t always improve a nation’s culture.  The Bidenomics of throwing money at problems before the 2024 elections were politically ineffectual.

In American democracy today the majority of people define their cultural and moral standards through partisan politics.  In a pluralistic democracy political standards should provide for the common good.  Even then there are major differences, but today America’s polarized politics are dominated by partisan hatred rather than seeking to promote the common good.

Voters must end America’s polarized partisan politics to avoid the partisan trap that defines all national candidates along partisan lines.  That’s the only way to restore politics that can provide the common good.  Before the era of Trump we had leaders in both parties who had conservative and liberal perspectives of what constituted the common good.

   

Conservative and liberal labels don’t work in today’s polarized partisan politics since voters have to choose between Democratic and Republican candidates who put loyalty to their party ahead of other political issues.  You can be either conservative or liberal, but you won’t find any candidates who feel free to support true conservative or liberal political views.

Brooks ends up saying that “If you find some lefties who are willing to spend money fighting poverty but also willing to promote the traditional values and practices that enable people to rise, you can sign me up for the revolution.”

Notes:

David Brooks has cited a study “suggesting that merely giving people money doesn’t do much to lift them out of poverty. Families with at least one child received $333 a month. They had more money to spend, which is a good thing, but the children fared no better than similar children who didn’t get the cash. They were no more likely to develop language skills or demonstrate cognitive development. They were no more likely to avoid behavioral problems or developmental delays.  Kelsey Piper noted in another study published last year that families given $500 a month for two years had no big effects on the adult recipients’ psychological well-being and financial security. A study that gave $1,000 a month did not produce better health, career, education or sleep outcomes or even more time with their children.”  Piper noted that once children’s basic material needs are met, characteristics of their parents become more important to how they turn out than anything additional money can buy.”

Conservatism, as you know, is a complete mess in America right now. But reading conservative authors like Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gertrude Himmelfarb and James Q. Wilson does give you an adequate appreciation for the power of nonmaterial forces — culture, moral norms, traditions, religious ideals, personal responsibility and community cohesion. That body of work teaches you, as Burke wrote, that manners and morals are more important than laws. You should have limited expectations about politics because not everything can be solved with a policy.”

Matt Bruenig’s contention was typical of liberals.  He scorned the very idea that focusing on human capital is a good way to improve social mobility. He wrote, “Cash is the key part of every welfare state in the developed world and absolutely critical for keeping poverty down.” We shouldn’t make fighting poverty overly complicated, he argued. “As a policy matter, these are mostly solved problems.” Just write people checks.

Progressives, by contrast, are quick to talk about money but slow to talk about the values side of the equation. “This materialistic bent leads to all sorts of bad judgments. For example, Joe Biden and his team had one job: to make sure Donald Trump never set foot in the White House again. They tried to accomplish that the only way they knew how: throw money at the problem. The vast bulk of the new Biden spending went to red states to employ workers without college degrees. Politically, the project was a complete failure. Populism is not primarily economic; it’s about respect, values, national identity and many other things. All that spending did not win anybody over.  Today most of our problems are moral, relational and spiritual more than they are economic. There is the crisis of disconnection, the collapse of social trust, the loss of faith in institutions, the destruction of moral norms in the White House, the rise of amoral gangsterism around the world. I wish both right and left could embrace the more complex truth that the neocon Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed in his famous maxim: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change culture and save it from itself.” If you can find some lefties who are willing to spend money fighting poverty but also willing to promote the traditional values and practices that enable people to rise, you can sign me up for the revolution.”  See Why I Am Not a Liberal, By David Brooks, at  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/opinion/liberal-conservative-left-right-politics.html.