NPR recently did a segment on the climate summit in Copenhagen and a man from Africa was discussing the debt the rest of the world owes to underdeveloped countries faced with economic and humanitarian crises brought about by global warming. While his message was one of humanitarian compassion and expressed the great need his country faces, what I started thinking about was liberal viewpoints.
I began to wonder how where we are born influences our political leanings. I was born into a pretty conservative family here in the US. I grew up with everything I needed and most of what I wanted. I led, and still lead, a comparatively privileged life in my opinion. We’re not well off by any means, but we don’t ever go hungry, our kids had plenty of clothes and toys, and our youngest had the benefit of an at-home parent for most of his 15 years. My husband is a moderate conservative, while I am (and have always been) a flaming liberal. Most of my children have more conservative tendencies, to my dismay. Perhaps as they age that might change, but who knows?
My actual question concerns being a US citizen versus being a European or African or Micronesian. Would staunch conservatives like, say Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich, be more liberal if they had been poor or from a third-world country? Does deprivation and need lead one to become more inherently liberal in political views? Does being well-off and well-fed lead people to more conservative values?
Political conservatism and political liberalism are hard to define. The difference, from what I have learned, is that conservatism is aimed at maintaining the status quo – stability and continuity – and making each individual personally responsible for him or herself. Things like inherited privilege, the right to rule (or govern), and the establishment of religion as a base for human society. Liberalism, as defined by John Locke, is to live ones life so that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Most conservatives would be dismayed to learn that the authors of our Declaration of Independence were greatly influenced by philosophers like John Locke and espoused their beliefs in the phrase, “all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to insure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
While individual responsibility is not a bad thing, it does have limits. Human society has always had members who couldn’t take care of themselves and their own. Whether because of physical or mental disability, economic constraints, environmental factors, or cultural norms, society has always had an underclass of people who were dependent upon the grace of others to survive. In the global scheme today it is the under-developed nations suffering from famine, rising ocean levels, disease, and economic disaster. I was particularly struck by the pleas of those in Micronesia, an archipelago of islands in the South Pacific. Thousands of people are already feeling the impact of rising sea levels. They have nowhere to go. No country is coming forward to offer them a place to go. No one is offering solutions for them. They’re a poor nation of disconnected islands facing a national, cultural, and human disaster. If this was Martha’s Vineyard, could the same be said.
If you are realizing this is a rant about the injustice of conservative politics, you’re spot on. Although I have to say there are a lot of people out there calling themselves liberals who are also not thinking about these things or doing anything about it. At least I’m thinking. Now, to the doing…
