Americans are once again preparing for the heart-wrenching drama of a presidential election. By the middle of 2008, we expect the nation to be neatly divided between fear and loathing of the left and fear and loathing of the right. The first thing Europeans need to know is that for the price of a movie ticket you can get much more entertainment and an experience that has just about as much to do with democracy and real American politics. It doesn’t matter which movie you see.
For the sake of American readers, I should point out that the left goes to a lot of effort to campaign in Europe against the Republican Party. Since this is a primer for Europeans, I won’t attempt to explain why. But the reason we Americans sometimes get the feeling that Europeans are all half-witted Commie-Nazi America haters is because there is no balance in the campaign. The vast majority of Europeans are too busy working and leading happy productive lives to participate. Most who are politically engaged are more concerned about policy in their own countries and the growing power of the EU. This leaves the young and naive to absorb a great deal of leftist political propaganda related to American politics with no filter or guidance. Thus, there is a need for at least some kind of basic primer.
Central to misunderstanding American political philosophy is a confusion of terms. The U.S. political system, complete with its “unalienable rights” was formulated from classic liberalism. Thus, our de facto mainstream political spectrum evolved differently than in Europe. Our “left” and “right” do not correspond to the socialist spectrum that emerged before and during WWII; with Nazis on the right and Commies on the left.
An American political conservative is one who seeks to preserve the core of the formally established political system, defined by the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Generally speaking, the more politically conservative one is in the American sense, the more their views will correspond to classic liberalism. Ironically, the more “liberal” a person is said to be, the less liberal they actually are.
We have distorted the use of these terms even further. The terms conservative and liberal are general terms that also apply outside the political context. Social liberals gained a great deal of traction in the 1960s, resulting ultimately in the backlash from social conservatives that we see today. The social spectrum does not correspond directly with the political spectrum; but there is a statistically significant correlation between party affiliation and social views. This further distorts any relationship the parties might have had to any particular political philosophy.
The terms “right”, “left”, “conservative”, and “liberal” most often serve as proxies for the two major political parties – the Republican Party and the Democratic Party – regardless of where their positions may be on any theoretical political spectrum. When for example, Hillary Clinton cringes her face to condemn an opponent for being “conservative”, the meaning is actually no deeper than that he is running as a Republican candidate and she is running as a Democrat. Even Americans may be misled by this use of the terms – which is exactly the point of using them this way.
It is quite common for professional politicians to view voters as the real enemy, a population to be conquered, and confusion in the language of politics is a relatively simple way to confuse the enemy. The great fear and loathing each side has for the other is also the result of a strategy of conquest – divide and conquer. In the past few decades, this strategy has been successful enough to uproot the nation – in terms of real policy change – from its classic liberal foundation. This was an enormous feat, given that much of the population is still unaware of this dramatic and fundamental change. The Bill of Rights, which provides the foundation in a formal sense, has not been changed. The effect however is greater determination by real American political conservatives to reverse the trend while anti-liberals (in the classic sense) still have momentum.
That the election campaigns themselves have so little to do with democracy has a lot to do with our “two-party” system; a system that we do not actually formally have. Our Constitution defines a non-partisan system. When Americans vote in general elections, they are formally voting for individuals who run for office, not the parties they belong to. But our Constitution also guarantees political freedom. Regardless of how much freedom we have lost in recent decades, the right to join and operate political parties is not yet among the losses.
There is an overriding ethic in campaigns driven by the two major parties – preservation of the two-party system. They have an argument that has sustained this system for generations. It operates as a self-fulfilling prophesy. Assuming that either a Republican or Democrat will win, then you must vote for either a Republican or a Democrat to assure victory for either the “right” or the “left”, in support of your “conservative” or “liberal” views, which of course means assuring victory for either a Republican or a Democrat. Voters have found this argument so compelling that it generally stops most so-called “third party” candidates from getting to first base.
Election campaigns today have very little to do with democracy or real American politics. The cringe-faced symbolic references have nothing to do with the politics of actual legislation and policy change. Both major parties generally push the country in the same direction, while merely inventing different excuses for doing it. And despite the applause Republicans get at socially conservative conferences, there will be little impact on abortion policy if they win. Extreme man-hating feminists needn’t bother with campaign contribution drives for Democrats because politicians from both sides profit from participation in their programs. Both parties have a stake in the destruction of the classic liberal foundation of the country because it means more power for them. That’s real American politics.
