A Progressive/Conservative Alliance?

Brice Lindsey’s New Republic piece on liberaltarianism, a fusion of libertarianism and liberalism, remains the talk of the town.Even so, the “proudly eponymous” Matthew Yglesia finds the whole idea conceptually unsound. A far more likely scenario would involve a fusion of some conservative elements with progressives, he says. As for libertarianism’s prospects:

Contemporary liberalism is committed to an effort to at least trying to find pragmatic ways to promote the common good, which will entail some overlap with libertarian policy ideas but it’s a limited degree of overlap and it’s not really at all the same approach to these questions.

As for conservatism:

In a lot of ways, I see more promise in trying to fuse elements of the progressive agenda with some elements of the much-derided cultural conservatism. At the moment, the cultural right is pretty heavily invested in an anti-gay agenda (or, perhaps in opposition to the “homosexual agenda”) in a way that makes bridges hard to find.

I think Yglesias is on to something. If plain old-fashioned capitalism results in creative destruction, global capitalism breeds a form of creative destruction on crack — a force many progressives and conservatives alike regard with equal fear and loathing. Progressives fear the immiseration and worker displacement associated with globalization, conservatives the dilution of family and cultural bonds that inevitably will follow in globalization’s wake.

Simply put, there is common ground here — more, it seems, than between progressivism and libertarianism. Under the circumstances, it is conceivable that common concerns about globalization and other 21^st century-related fears could produce a heightened level of cooperation in the turbulent years to come. Granted, both sides will have to agree to disagree in some instances, but that’s been the nature of political coalitions for time eternal. (Just ask the Germans, who have been governed by two post-war grand coalition comprised of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats.)

Disagreement notwithstanding, the two camps likely would manage to hammer out a broad consensus on programs that could secure both progressive and conservative goals. The earned income tax credit comes to mind. So, for that matter, does rural revitalization. Traditionalists may even secure more tangible goods under such an arrangement — far more than they have within the current alliance.

For more a quarter century, establishment conservatives have gladly paid lip service to deeply held traditionalist convictions in exchange for votes and money. In return, traditionalist have gotten little in return — form but very little substance.

Yes, progressives will remain implacably opposed to Roe v. Wade. On the other hand, they may be amenable to social policies that indirectly discourage abortion.

Federalism and localism, two principles near and dear to the traditionalist heart, may also carry greater value within such an alliance. Why? Because by agreeing to disagree, many contentious issues — abortion and gay marriage, for example — necessarily would have to worked out at the state and local level.

Of course, this is only talk, and readers should never lose sight of this fact.  Responding to Lindsey’s  last Tuesday, the Cato Institute’s Will Wilkinson stressed that all of this initial enthusiasm for a new fusionism among bloggers and others is misplaced.

Any fusion between two disparate camps needs a significant degree of intellectual coherence to endure.

“Fixating on the status quo balance of interest groups is a great way to go nowhere, or just to drift with the waxing and waning of constituencies wedded to superannuated ideas, he writes. Agreed.

As intriguing as all of this seems, the differences between Rawls and Hayek simply can’t be ignored — neither, for that matter, can the those between Rawls and Burke.