The Liberal and Conservative Litmus Test?

I have been wrestling with this one for awhile. I will get into debates with people on various issues, and sometimes they will call me a "liberal", usually when they have run out of coherent arguments. I'm the type of person that believes that both political extremes are very unwise to follow, especially since most of the population is a proverbial "stone's throw" from the middle. That got me to thinking. What is a liberal exactly? What do they believe, and how is it different from a moderate Democrat, as I describe myself to be?

I have often thought that some of the difference between moderate Democrats and liberal Democrats can be measured in terms of tactics, and can also be extended to moderate and conservative Republicans as well. The most liberal and the most conservative people tend to be the loudest in their opposition to the other side. I think that they also tend to see the opposing party as being more radical, since they are further from the opposing view than moderates. There is a well-known principle of social psychology that states that people see the group that they are in as more diverse than the group that they oppose. One side sees different people with similar but diverse views and backgrounds coming together under their own "big tent", while the other side sees these same people as a flock of sheep following their party's directives, but I digress. There tends to be more name-calling, more good versus evil imagery, more anger, and more demagoguery the further right and left you go. While this can be an interesting and sometimes effective method of spotting extreme views, it does not describe or explain the differences between the extremes and the middle in terms of issues, and that is the only way to really do it systematically. Here is a better way.

First, there is the problem with how we define the differences within a party, because so many issues are binary. You either believe X or you believe Y, and there sometimes isn't much of a Z. Certainly issues have in-between views, especially economic issues, but many "variations", on social issues especially, are on a specific facet of an issue, and therefore are just an X and Y of a different but related issue. For the purposes of this discussion, I will focus on social issues, but it certainly applies to many economic issues as well. What does all this mean in terms of categorization and a litmus test? It means that Democrats of all types are going to tend to agree with each other on both the most contentious issues (the ones where it is at least close to 50/50 split in the general public, 40-60 percent agreeing we'll say), and ones which "favor" them overall (where say, the public favors the Democratic idea, 60-100 percent agreeing). For these issues, the liberal view and the moderate view probably will not differ very much, and therefore with issues like first trimester abortion where most Dems, many independents, and even some Republicans agree, it can't be used as a "liberal test". The same is true in reverse for the Republicans when it comes to full marriage rights for gays as a "conservative test", since many independents and many Democrats agree with most Republicans. This leads us to the conclusion that the fewer moderates agree with a particular position, the more liberal or conservative that position probably is. When you lose nearly all moderate support and some of your own party's support for an issue, it drifts into the thirtysomething percent or less approval zone, and it tells you that most of the support is now coming from only the core left or right. Keep in mind that this does not make the position automatically "wrong"! It also does not mean that doing the most popular thing is always best either. It just means that view is further toward one end of the political spectrum, and therefore more liberal or more conservative.

My conclusion is that there actually is a "pretty good" rule of thumb that you can use. If you want to find out how liberal or conservative someone is, you ask them about some issues that most moderates, and therefore a solid majority of the public, tend to agree with their opposing party on. There are fewer of these issues than you think, since many of the biggest issues of our time are split closely along party lines, so choose carefully! You then put all of that together, and can at least get a general idea.

Make no mistake, I do not think that people have to be categorized at all! I just think that if you are going to call someone a "liberal" or a "conservative", at least know why you do so, and what one is.