Blind Prophecy

After having the same conversation for the 6th time this election season, it occurs to me that I ought to simply blog it and organize my thoughts for quick future reference.

“I’m socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.” If I had a quarter for every time I heard that line, I’d qualify for higher taxes under the Obama plan.

But all too often, when I press people to explain what they mean, I’m shocked to learn that they mean the government should be “responsible” when it comes to money. There’s nothing about about spending priorities, overall philosophy about taxation and its role in the commonwealth, government regulations of industry, or the social safety net.

I don’t want to generalize, I’m sure there are some people I’ve spoken to who genuinely do hold with small-c conservative financial doctrine. But somewhere along the way, the majority of us have allowed the precise meanings of this phrase (along with its political antonym “fiscally liberal”) to shift. Unlike the Orweliian wordsmithing and framing of right-wing think tanks that account for a lot of shifting meanings in our political discourse of recent years, I blame this more on simple connotation/denotation confusion and lack of political science training.

(The high school English nerd is coming out.)

Simply put, most words have two levels of meaning. Denotation is the strict meaning of a word or phrase. In denotative terms, “fiscal conservative” means someone who favors a policy of limited government involvement or regulation over industry, priority spending on military strength, and sometimes promotion of extreme free market capitalism; whereas “fiscal liberal” means someone who favors enforcing (through taxes or regulation) fair access to the commonwealth (shared resources and money), prioritizing spending on programs that the government is better equipped to deal with than private industry (e.g. building roads, public education, the social safety net), and sometimes the promotion of socialistic capitalism.

Connotation, however, refers to the emotional or associative meanings we give terms. In this case, we associate the word “conservative” with qualities like careful, limited, cautious, strict, and responsible. Alternately, the word “liberal” with qualities like loose, lavish, plentiful (as in “a liberal amount”), and casual. Taken in context, “fiscal conservative” conjures up images of someone who is careful and responsible with money, versus “fiscal liberal” which hints at someone who is unstructured and uncontrolled with money.

Make no mistake, regardless of whether the shift in word meaning is an accident of language or engineered by right-wing thing tanks, those radically right intellectuals are making the most advantage of this confusion over political ideology.

There is nothing inherently irresponsible or unstructured about liberal fiscal policies. As a fiscally liberal person, I believe that the government should be responsible with American tax dollars. Hell, I think every tax-paying citizen, regardless of political persuasion, assumes as much. The difference between me and a fiscally conservative person lies in priorities (and, deep down, some fundamental differences in economic theory – but that’s unimportant to my point).

I want the government to properly fund education. I want the government to support creativity and the arts, because the private sector might discourage innovation and promote cookie-cutter schlock. I want the government to promote science and research. I want the government to temper the greed and excess of the private market through regulation and programs that allow us to succeed when we do our very best and it’s still not enough. I want the government to spend less on military programs and more on diplomatic and philanthropic programs that promote global prosperity and peace.

I don’t want my government spending wastefully. I don’t want higher taxes for the sake of higher taxes, but I do believe in paying my fair share with minimum grumbling. I don’t want spending without oversight, I don’t think all problems can be solved by throwing more money at them, and I don’t believe in crazy deficit spending and out-of-control national debt.

I do think government should be responsible for justifying its spending choices, should tax the citizenry only as is necessary and fair, and that we look at systemic problems and demand accountability and reform where it is needed. I do believe that a balanced budget and minimum national debt should be a goal.

Fiscal liberals are not what you think they are.

I know I’m tilting at windmills, here, and I’m not going to singlehandedly start a movement to reclaim the concept of “fiscally liberal” as a term that is embraced. I just hope that over here in my small corner of the blogosphere, we can start putting more thought into our economic theories before we announce that we are “fiscally conservative.”

Filed under: politics by Jere Keys