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The Usefulness of Political Labels

by Scott H. Payne

It seems as though there is a goodly amount of maneuvering going on right now about different political designations and labels. Discussions abound about what it really means to be “conservative” or liberal, as well as Jonah Goldberg’s recent post that has kicked up some dust about the potential future of “liberaltarianism”.

The most complimentary post I think I’ve ever received in regards to my politics came from co-blogger Mark Thompson writing about this site when he said,

Importantly, and just as any ordinary group of friends outside the blogosphere, membership in our group is not based on any adherence to a particular set of political beliefs – Dave and I come at things from a roughly libertarian starting point, Freddie and Kyle from a roughly liberal/Progressive starting point, E.D. from a starting point that I would characterize as more or less Burkean (he may disagree, though), and Scott and Chris from a starting point that I’m not quite sure how to characterize[.]

I take Mark’s comment to be complimentary because my own view of poltics is that if I’m doing them correctly I should be difficult to characterize. Which leads me to question the overall usefulness of political labels. I understand and am willing to acknowledge the general usefulness of having a short hand with which to identify someone’s political persuasion, but my questioning is around the particular accuracy of those labels when the rubber hits the road.

Is anyone ever really “conservative” or “liberal” or “libertarian” all the time, ad infinitum? And the pushing around of definitive dirt that seems to be a subtext of political discourse lately seems to indicate that the definitions for those labels is always up for debate and discussion, at least in some meaningful senses. Universalized political labels bring out my wariness because I think beyond the ideals that we identify and house within such labels there operates the dynamics of a moving world with shifting contexts and circumstances. Human beings themselves are not beyond the influence of that dynamism and so seem to have certain regular shifts in the way they see the world which exerts its own effect on their perceived political orbit.

I worry that our political short hand becomes an inhibitor in really understanding one another in political discourse because it tends to presuppose certain conclusions that often times go unchallenged, or even unexamined much of the time. The ability to call someone “conservative” or “liberal” or the like means that you know certain things about certain people without having to check in about those things and ostensibly leads to a pervasive tendency of talking past one another. The ensuiung obscurantism means that our politics becomes an increasingly blunt tool, where the challenges around addressing different political, social, and cultural issues seems to call for as fine a tool as we can muster.

The converse conclusion, which I find in many ways equally unsatisfying, is that all politics are necessarily situational. My dissatisfaction with a wholly situational politics arises out of a perceived loss of meaning through the jettisoning of first or core principles. While wary of universalized labels, I’m also not willing to postmodernize our discourse into ideological relativity wherein meaning is pale ephemera of laughable value. Acknowledging the dynamism of our shifting contexts, I still feel some intitution that we are working towards something in all of this talk, that there is a project of clarification that yelds us helpful explanatory outcomes and thus makes the effort engaged worthwhile.

I suppose that my end point winds up being that it is necessary to acknowledge that politics is at least partially situational and that our use of political labels ought to be consciously provisional. The further conclusion that one might draw from such consternation is that if you feel as I do an intuitional tickling about meaning that trasncends the shifting dynamism of our political posturing, then you might want to hold your ideological conclusions and orienting principles in loose relation so as to remain open to nuggets of truth that lay buried far beneath the maps that our limited conceptions of political mapping demarcate.

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4 comments

1 Mike { 02.14.09 at 4:50 pm }

I’ve been kicking around this notion as well, as Mark referenced in the comments on another post. I am wondering if it would not be more beneficial to think of labels in terms of issues rather than people. For example, I consider education a fairly ‘progressive’ issue in the sense that most everyone wants some kind of change to our current system. So the question then becomes, what side of the fence we are on. I might say, “I’m pretty conservative on education,” which would roughly imply certain things like a preference for vouchers, weakening the power of teachers’ unions, etc. Jump to another issue, like teaching ID in public schools and I might say, “I’m liberal on the teaching of ID,” meaning that I am opposed to the notion. A short list of basic political leanings (liberal, centrist, conservative) would be a sort of shorthand with other labels (libertarian, etc) to follow.

I’m sure all of us have had the experience of being stereotyped by a fellow blogger or chatboard member because we say we’re Republican or Democrat or whatever. Then when you come down outside the party line on an issue, there is an explosion of surprise or suspicion. If we moved to an issue-by-issue approach it might aleviate some of that.

2 greginak { 02.15.09 at 12:39 am }

Labels have really good uses if one has a relatively shared definition to use with others. unfortunately labels, as you note, are more a short hand for pigeonholing people without listening. or people use hostile, negative definitions. but i think an even bigger problem is that political labels have become a cultural signifier. here in Alaska i have had conversations with people who would choke over calling themselves a liberal yet completely endorse liberal views. Conservative is just what you are supposed to be.

3 Joseph { 02.15.09 at 4:25 pm }

indeed, greg, and i think that may be the real reason (rather than relative accuracy or inaccuracy at any given moment) why some of us really find them confusing and unfortunate. if being “consertive” or “libertarian” or “liberal” or whatever can n be portrayed as nothing more than a “lifestyle”, devoid of any ideological content save tribal loyalty, then i’d rather make up my own like reihan.

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