Do political labels make things clear or just confuse everyone?

By David McElroy · May 26, 2011

One of my very first political clients had no idea what she believed in, but she knew she was a conservative. It was about 20 years ago and I was new enough in political consulting that I’d take whatever clients I could get. The woman was a first-time candidate running for an office with enough prominence that she was going to be interviewed by a local TV news crew. She was terrified, and she became my client because she needed someone to help her prepare and then to run her campaign.

I did a mock interview in front of a video camera and tried tossing her softballs in the beginning just to get her comfortable. I just asked her to tell me what she was in favor of — what she believed in.

“Well, I’m a conservative,” she said confidently.

“What does that mean? What do you believe in?” I asked.

“Well … I’m a conservative. I believe in … well … conservative things. … So I’m … conservative.”

Things went downhill from there. She had no idea what she believed. The only thing she was sure of was that she was a conservative. Over the years, I’ve come to believe that most people are in the same boat. They know what label they apply to themselves, but they have little idea what it means. What’s worse, many others who use the same word use it to mean other things entirely.

The typical response from lots of bright people has been to create complicated charts such as this and this and this. Or even this. The results are messy and confusing for people who don’t want degrees in political science. What’s worse, few of the systems agree with each other.

If you talk about conservatives, are you talking about the Goldwater conservatives of 1964? Are you talking about the Nixon conservatives of 1972? The Reagan conservatives of 1980? Or the Jerry Falwell social conservatives? These four figures represent radically different things, but they’re all called conservative. We could go on and on — and we could do the same game with so-called liberals — but you get the point.

So if the most common labels — such as liberal and conservative — are muddled and meaningless, we’re at least better off in fringe political movements, because we all agree on what we believe. Right? Well, do you know of any two libertarians whose beliefs and values are identical? I don’t. And the more I talk to people about what they really believe and what they really want, I find that they agree on less than they realize they do. Typical libertarians might talk a lot about liberty and property rights, for instance, but the actual definitions of what those things mean get pretty narrow and confusing depending on who you’re talking to.

So are political labels useless? Insofar as completely understanding someone else’s positions, probably. As shorthand that lets some of us work together on some of the key things we can agree on, the labels can have some use. But we have to resist the temptation to believe that everybody who uses our label agrees with us about everything. What’s more important, we don’t have to agree about everything.

In my experience, a shockingly high percentage of libertarians are afflicted with what I call “libertarian disease.” It’s an illness that makes you believe you know everything and have a moral responsibility to explain to everyone else why he’s wrong. If you’re a libertarian, you’ve probably seen it — in online discussion groups, personal bull sessions and 10-hour executive committee meetings of political parties that are supposed to be making plans, but degenerate into arguments about how many libertarian angels can dance on the head of a pin.

We have to learn to work together with people on the things we can work together on, but not personally attack those who we disagree with. Years ago, the late Marshall Fritz spoke to me of “80 percenters” and 90 percenters” and “100 percenters.” He said that many of those who are 100 percent believers in liberty are disdainful of the “90 per centers,” who agree with them about most things but not everything. And the “90 percenters” are many times disdainful of the “80 percenters” — and so forth. I think Marshall was right. As long as we’re living in a society that’s so far away from the ideal any of us wants, we have an incentive to work for the things we all do believe in.

I’d prefer to get away from the labels and talk more about what the world needs to look like — in concrete terms — so that more and more and more people can get what they want. The truth is that I’m not going to get a world that completely looks like what I want it to look like, but you’re not, either. And nobody else is. We can either spend the rest of our lives — and our children’s lives and grandchildren’s lives — arguing about what “the world” should be like or we can try to develop systems that let each one of us set up the corner of the world where we want to live in our own ways.

Some people are going to want to set up enclaves or cities with practices you disagree with, but they have that right — just as you’re going to have the right to say what you want to set up. The key, though, is that you have to be willing to build what you want and then you have to compete for “customers.”

For too long, pretty much everybody has wanted to dictate what “the world” needs to look like. In the post-statist future, you’re going to be able to have what you want, but only if you’re willing to plan it and build it. If you’re not willing to do that, you’ll be stuck choosing among what other people have built to offer to the market. And maybe that’ll be good enough for you. After all, in the same way, most of us shop in stores that other people open and run. The key, though, is that it’s your choice. The state will no longer have a monopoly that prevents you from following a dream of remaking one little corner of the world.

Whatever label you apply to yourself, realize that we all have an incentive to build a world where we can all get our own way. I’d much rather work with a socialist who wants to start a commune/city for himself and others (without requiring me to be part of it) than with a libertarian who wants to force everyone into accepting his version of freedom.

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Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

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