If you're anything like me, you often find yourself disagreeing with political liberals. But just when you think you might be a conservative, you find yourself disagreeing with them as well. So after a while, you think you might be a liberal. Then the liberals do or say something which really sends you on a tear, and the process begins again.
Well, we're not alone! Steven Den Beste has a great description of several dimensions of personal/political orientation. I can't hope to do justice to his description, but I'll summarize it for those of you who don't want to wade through his fairly long posting. In what follows, if the term is used in its common sense, I'll enclose it in quotes — "liberal" or "conservative." If it's used in the sense Den Beste intends, I won't.
The classic "liberal-conservative" spectrum can be considered a line, which has one dimension. "Liberals" are considered to be on the left, "conservatives" on the right. What Mr. Den Beste does is assert there are as many as SEVEN dimensions (although they are not all independent). I don't know how you would draw this number of dimensions; if you're familiar with higher-dimensional spaces in mathematics you could think of it in that fashion. Anyway, he describes the following axes:
conservative — revolutionary
liberal — autocrat/elitist
realist — idealist
tolerant — conformist
capitalist — socialist
individual — group
opportunity — result
scientific — post-modernist
(this one is mine, not Den Beste's)
A conservative (according to Den Beste's definition) is one who defends the status quo; a revolutionary is one who wants to change it. (This can vary from place to place — a conservative in the U.S. would support freedom of religion, since the U.S. has it; a conservative in Saudi Arabia would oppose it, since they do not have such freedom.)
In Den Beste's view, liberals believe in the rights of the masses, and believe in limited government. Autocrats/elitists believe that an elite should make most decisions about how people live. (So the U.S. is a liberal country. Iran, China, North Korea are elitist; Western Europe is more elitist than the U.S., but less so than dictatorships such as China.)
Realism is a "half a loaf is better than none" philosophy, and realizes that it is always necessary to make compromises. Idealists accept nothing short of perfection.
The tolerant/conformist axis measures how much you believe "people can do what they want, as long as they don't hurt anyone else." Upsetting someone doesn't count as "hurting." This axis is where a lot of "liberals" (in the often-used sense, not Den Beste's sense) — who believe in the nanny state and hate speech and political correctness and want to tell people how to live — are actually in the same place as many "conservatives" (again, in the often-used sense) — who want to force everyone to pray or go to church or avoid premarital sex or avoid drinking or avoid gambling or avoid dancing.
The liberals and conservatives here differ on what they want people to do or avoid, but they agree that the state should force people to behave in a certain way. This is one of the reasons many people feel the extreme right and the extreme left meet — often, both groups are conformists. This is one area where libertarians try to distinguish themselves from "liberals" and "conservatives". Libertarians tend to be very strong advocates for tolerance. In many ways, this axis is tied to the liberal/elitist axis — liberals (not in the often-used sense, but in Den Beste's sense) believe in allowing the masses to make decisions, while elitists do not. The former tend to be tolerant, the latter conformist.
It is important to realize that tolerance, in the sense used here, does not mean PERSONAL tolerance or approval of an activity. Tolerance of an activity means you do not want the state to attempt to keep people from doing it.
The capitalist/socialist axis is pretty self-evident. How much government control of the economy are you willing to tolerate?
The individual/group axis describes how much people should be considered as individuals, versus as members of groups. This relates to "identity politics." Many people — usually "liberals" in the often-used sense — believe that being Black, or being Hispanic, or being gay, determines one's identity and opinions more so than anything else. (I don't think much of this argument — not all White people think alike; there are gay Republicans and gay Democrats; Colin Powell, who is Black, is a lot different from Harry Belafonte, who is also Black. But that just means I'm on the leftist portion of this scale.)
The opportunity/result axis describes the extent to which one will demand equality of results vs. equality of opportunity. Den Beste tends to believe (as do I) that the last three axes — capitalist/socialist, individual/group, and opportunity/result — all collapse into an inequality/equality axis. (Meaning those on the left are willing to accept inequality of results as long as equality of opportunity is present. Those on the right try to force equality of results, which requires the power of the state. Such forced equality is also anti-capitalist and anti-individualist. It also tends to be elitist.)
The major difference between scientists (or cultural modernists) and post-modernists is that the latter believe there is no objective reality, and that intentions alone determine right and wrong. The latter believe that "science is a white male construct" (and that a science created by women of color would be just as valid, even if its predictions were quite different). They also believe in cultural relativism – that a society which treats women like property (Afghanistan under the Taliban) is just as worthy as one that doesn't (most Western countries); that a society which tortures and murders thousands on the basis of their political beliefs (Cuba under Castro; Iraq under Saddam) is just a society with different values than ours, and that we can't presume to judge it.
The post-modernists are the ones you always see worrying about people's intentions, and proclaiming their good intentions. When criticizing others, they always criticize intentions and attribute the worst of intentions to those they criticize. Good intentions that lead to bad results, or less-than-honorable intentions that lead to good results, do not concern them. These are the folks who condemn "capitalist greed" (in other words, choosing your own profession and trying to be well-paid for your work) despite capitalism's great achievements; these are the folks who praise the "noble experiment" of communism (despite the fact that communism has resulted in mass starvation, mass slaughter, and deprivation of human rights virtually every place it has been tried). Elsewhere on this site, I have a brief description of the differences between cultural modernists (or scientists) and post-modernists.
It should be clear, looking at these axes, that the "liberal" and "conservative" positions (using the terms as they are usually used) are quite inadequate. It is possible to be both liberal (anti-elitist) and conservative (not a revolutionary) at the same time. Religious "conservatives" (Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson come to mind) tend to be revolutionaries (they want to eliminate the freedom of religion the U.S. currently has), elitist (they don't trust the masses to make decisions; they feel a religious, authoritarian state must make decisions for the masses), and conformist (they certainly don't want the state to tolerate deviations from their edicts).
Many "liberals" are also revolutionaries, elitist, and conformist (Hillary Clinton, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore come to mind.) So even though they might differ from the religious right in WHAT they want to force people to do, they join the former in deciding that the masses must be forced to DO THE RIGHT THING, and that DEVIATIONS from the party line WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
After Den Beste shows us these dimensions, Bill Whittle says they may reduce to one – responsibility.
Here is a more sarcastic view of the differences between liberals and conservatives.
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