I am (and am not) liberal - Anonymous

I don't see that anyone with any intelligence and sense of reason would be able to honestly say that they are one or the other!

Am I a liberal? - Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor

I am suspicious of labels, whether political or ideological: as Bishop Tom Wright has said of the practice of categorising everyone politically as either “left” or “right”, labels foster “an inappropriate ‘package deal’ mentality where it is assumed that once you decide on one issue you are committed to a particular position on lots of others as well”. Labels also lend themselves to being used pejoratively, as when someone who believes in the importance to a healthy society of stable marriages and families is described as “socially conservative” even if he or she may favour higher taxes on the rich and re-nationalising the railways. Gladstone’s liberalism was essentially an expression of his revulsion from tyranny and oppression; but when he moved across the political spectrum from high Tory to Liberal, he retained what would today be regarded as many strongly “conservative” strands in his thinking, including a strong religious faith and devotion to the Anglican Church.

If to be liberal means to be in favour of liberty, equality and fraternity – of freedom, fairness and the brotherhood of mankind – then surely all Christians are, or ought to be, liberal; and so, I hope, am I. But what do the words really signify, and how far are the three aspirations compatible with one another? As the leaders of the French Revolution quickly discovered, the attainment of equality is impossible without coercion; and freedom of thought and conscience is bound to lead to sharp disagreements over what is or is not allowable behaviour, and thus - inexorably - to restrictions on freedom in one direction or another.

Currently, the emphasis is once again on the paramount importance of equality: racial or social discrimination of any kind is the great sin. But if those who believe abortion to be wrong in principle may not even refuse to assist at abortions because other people believe that abortion is a right to which everyone should have equal access, where does that leave freedom of conscience and belief? If fairness is crucial, why should some people be disapproved of (if not yet actually outlawed) for spending their money on giving their children a better than average education and yet almost encouraged to spend their money on expensive holidays and a luxurious lifestyle which others cannot afford? Of course it is unfair that some people should be able to get a better education than others, but should non-discrimination entail that, if some people can’t have it, no one should?

“In my experience”, says the philosopher Roger Scruton, “the most intolerant people are liberals: people who can tolerate any belief as long as it is not seriously held and who therefore demonise everyone who disagrees with them”. Sadly, those with whom liberals  disagree often seem to include those who have a respect for the Natural Law or who have a religious perspective on the human condition. Gladstone, I think, would be dismayed. Scruton may exaggerate; but there is enough truth in his aphorism to make me cautious about claiming to be a liberal today. 

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor is Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster

An Anonymous Confession....

I vote Tory. I always have. Sorry.

I am not liberal - Anonymous

I think that I have been made and/or influenced to think I should be liberal. I can think freely, but not express freely, for fear of being non-PC.

'I am (NOT) liberal' - Tony Barrett

I think that with regard to:

SMALL THINGS (kids playing loud music on buses):  I am not liberal
MEDIUM THINGS (right to abortion):                         I am liberal
BIG THINGS (destruction of the planet):                      I am not liberal

Tony Barrett: Slightly depressed Green campaigner

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I am (and am not) liberal - Anonymous

All individuals should be able to make their own choices in life. Law and order, of course, need to be maintained in order to have peace on our crowded, multi-cultural society. However, cases should be individually assessed; the law is not a black-and-white answer.

'Why I am (probably) not liberal' - Peter Kellner, Journalist, Political Commentator and Founder of YouGov

As Professor Joad used to say on the Brains Trust, (a popular, if somewhat patronising, discussion programme on BBC radio in the 1940’s), it all depends on what you mean by “liberal”. Here are three different ways in which the word has been defined in recent times:

1.       By supporters of the free-market right, to mean maximum economic freedom for businesses and individuals, with the minimum of state spending, intervention and regulation

2.       By civil and human rights activists and social libertarians, to mean the maximum possible personal freedom, especially in regard to sexuality, abortion, drugs, religion, free speech and the rights of defendants

3.       By Americans – by the Right as a term of abuse, by progressives as a badge of pride – to mean federal laws and spending to build a more equal society, and to defend the rights and advance the interests of less well-off Americans

I am definitely a liberal in terms of definition 3, and mainly one in terms of definition 2. I am not a liberal in terms of definition 1. So why do I say that, all in all, I am probably not a liberal?

For a start, I dislike labels whose meaning is either unclear or ambiguous. And in the contest to define “liberal” my sympathies are with the European mainland concept of a philosophy that puts personal autonomy ahead of collective decisions. To me, a thorough-going liberal is someone who wants the state to keep out of both private morality and business decisions.

On that definition, few people are true, 100 per cent Liberals – some libertarians, perhaps, but not many others. Quite a few people are economically liberal and socially conservative (the new Right in Europe and the US); lined against them are those who are economically interventionist and socially liberal (most of Britain’s left, including the Greens).

I belong broadly to the second group – except that I am queasy about taking an absolute position on the rights of defendants accused of terrorism. It’s not that I want them to lose their freedom without a proper trial, or to be convicted on the basis of secret evidence that can’t be tested: we lose the right to call ourselves civilised if we abandon habeas corpus and punish them too readily. But I do believe that we must balance the rights of suspects and the rights of the potential victims of terrorism – that is, all of us, or society as a whole.

And that is the point, for it has a wider application. Balances must be struck in all kinds of ways between the liberal rights of individuals and the collective rights of society. In strict terms, the minimum wage is an illiberal policy, as it interferes in the freedoms of employers and workers to negotiate pay. So is the ban on smoking in offices, pubs and restaurants. Speed limits curb our right to drive as fast as we like, and taxes curb our right to spend what we want.  Race Relations Acts and the laws of libel and contempt restrict our freedom of speech. As I support the minimum wage, smoking bans, speed limits, generous, tax-funded state provision, and some checks on what we can say in public, I am reluctant to claim to be a liberal.

Now, there are many people, including good friends of mine, who share these views and insist that they are good liberals. Their argument, as I understand it, is that liberalism has never been a purist doctrine, and that it is perfectly happy with restrictions on personal liberty where the benefits of collectively agreed restrictions outweigh the virtues of individual freedom.

The trouble is that this approach dilutes the definition of liberalism so much that it embraces virtually everyone except crooks, sociopaths and some recent bankers. Who, from the Thatcherite Right to Old Labour’s left-wing, would NOT defend their policies in terms of finding the right balance between personal freedom and collective rules? They would differ sharply about WHERE to strike that balance but not about the FACT that a balance is needed.

If “liberal” is to be saved from being diluted to death, it must revert to its proper, indeed noble, concept of a philosophy that values individual liberty above all else.  I want a society in which there are plenty of such liberals, perpetually questioning arguments for collective rules and challenging accretions of state (and, indeed, private) power.  They are vital irritants, ensuring that the proper quest for balance does not tip into authoritarianism.  However, I believe that many of the biggest problems we face today – from poverty to climate change – require collective action. So while I want liberals to question everything the state does, to probe the motives and measures of every government minister and corporate mogul, and generally kick up a fuss, I don’t actually want them in charge.

And if I don’t want them in charge, I can’t really call myself one of them.

Peter Kellner's YouGov blog