Seven recent news stories illustrate—for me at least—that shorthand political labels don’t clearly communicate where people fall on today’s ideological spectrum. “Liberal,” “moderate,” and “conservative” have lost any clear meaning for me. I think such labels contribute more to misunderstanding than to precise communication.

“Generally,” The Associated Press Stylebook says, “a description of specific political views is more informative than a generic label like liberal or conservative.”

I concur. I advise writers I work with to avoid shorthand labels and to explain clearly the political or social position they are reporting.

I acknowledge at the outset of this long post that many people don’t agree with my opinions about shorthand political labels. Family members, colleagues, and students have regularly told me over the years that I’m wrong or too picky about the use of political labels. They say everyone knows what a “liberal,” “moderate,” or “conservative” is. I disagree. Things that were once part of the conservative agenda, for example, such as limiting the size of government, supporting free trade, and controlling the national debt, are not current priorities among so-called “conservatives.” The seven examples below should illustrate my thinking further.

When I started this essay, I intended to advocate what I thought would be a conservative position. I would echo AP Stylebook guidance about avoiding shorthand labels. Reactions to my ideas over the past week have changed my mind. My thinking appears to be either radical or reactionary.

Nevertheless, I’m content to share my thoughts on this communication challenge. The fun of these essays is trying to explain my viewpoint. I don’t need to convince anyone that I’m right.

Consider the ambiguity that shorthand labels introduce in these examples:

Pope Francis and critics in the American church

Pope Francis communicated accurately in early August what he thought of some American Roman Catholics. He criticized “a very strong, organized reactionary attitude” among some American church members. He acknowledged that “backward-looking people” in the U.S. church opposed his leadership on current moral questions and wanted to reverse reforms brought about by the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962 to 1965.

American journalists muddled the pope’s message. The Associated Press reported Aug. 28 that Francis had “blasted the ‘backwardness’ of some conservatives in the U.S. Catholic Church.” The Washington Post’s online headline for its Aug. 29 story said, “Pope Francis criticizes ‘reactionary’ conservatives in U.S. Catholic Church.” The New York Times said in its Aug 30 story, “The pope lamented the ‘backwardness’ of some American conservatives who he said insist on a narrow, outdated and unchanging vision.”

The use of conservatives in these three stories doesn’t match my understanding of the word. “Conservatives,” Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary says, want to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions.

The Second Vatican Council ended in 1965. Its reforms have been in effect for nearly 60 years—longer than most American Roman Catholics have been alive. Pew Research said in 2015 that the median age of U.S. Roman Catholics was 49. The post-Vatican II church is the only one most American worshippers have ever known. Post-Vatican II doctrines, therefore, are the current tradition. The church members whom Francis criticized are, therefore, not conservatives. True conservatives would want to maintain the post-Vatican II doctrines.

The people opposing Francis are reactionary, just as the pope said. They want to go back to the way things in the church were before the Second Vatican Council.

Calling critics of the pope conservative is inaccurate. “Reactionary conservative” is an oxymoron. If you want to keep what the church is doing now (the conservative stance), you wouldn’t want to go back to what the church used to do (the reactionary stance).

Plan to transform the federal government in a second Trump administration.

The Associated Press reported Aug. 29 on a “constellation of conservative organizations” that want “to gut the ‘administrative state’ (federal bureaucracy) from within” if Donald Trump is reelected president. The group’s plan calls for “ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing.”

The Aug. 29 story says the plan contains “a mix of longstanding conservative policies and stark, head-turning proposals that gained prominence in the Trump era.” The plan was written by “some of today’s most prominent thinkers in the conservative movement.”

“A new executive approach to governing” doesn’t sound very conservative to me. “Stark, head-turning proposals” would appear to describe something radical.

Views on abortion in Door County, Wisconsin

A Sept. 2 Washington Post story examined how the “Abortion fight unites the left and rattles the right in key Wis. Battleground.” That story used “conservative” and “the right” as synonyms for “Republican.” “Liberal” and “the left” meant “Democrat.” Nevertheless, the facts in the story demonstrated that these liberal and conservative labels were too general to accurately categorize Republican or Democratic voters in Door County, Wisconsin.

“We’ve got disagreements on this (abortion) issue within our own party,” the story quoted one Republican leader as saying. “That’s the challenge: Finding a message we can all agree on.”

Corporate ‘liberalism’ in politics today

A Sept. 3 Washington Post opinion piece said corporate “liberalism” was changing today’s political landscape. The commentary reported results of an academic study of 320 business elites and 670 “ordinary people.” That study found that both Democratic and Republican business elites thought corporate America was moving away from a close connection to the Republican Party.

The commentary equated “the decoupling of business from the Republican coalition” with businesses becoming more “liberal.”— “that is, more deferential to authority and more favorably disposed to bureaucracy and expertise.”

“Conservatism, meanwhile,” the story said, “has moved in the opposite direction and become more populist and mistrustful of institutions.”

I noted that no quotations in the commentary from the research paper itself mentioned “liberal” or “conservative.” The opinion writer introduced those labels. The research analyzed a new way of thinking among Republican and Democratic business elites. The study, therefore, didn’t consider whether executives were liberal or conservative. The research examined the partisan identification of businesspeople with various ideas about how to interact with government. The opinion writer decided that “Democrat” equaled “liberal” and “Republican” equaled “conservative.”

Shifting stereotypes

The seven examples I’ve cited illustrate how empty common political labels have become, as far as I’m concerned. Labels reflect stereotypes. In these seven examples, however, the stereotypes are no longer accurate. The Sept. 3 Washington Post commentary shows that the business community’s political alignment is changing and that Republicans are becoming more populist. Language evolution has not kept pace with such political trends. As a result, American journalists (and others) no longer have a precise shorthand for the shifting social/political spectrum.

Labels like “liberal” or “conservative”—for me at least—are supposed to describe how a person or a movement approaches social or political change. These labels are not tied to specific sets of policies or specific political parties.

Conservatives, in my understanding, aren’t eager to change. They want to maintain (or conserve) the systems and traditions we have now. Moderates accept measured change. Moderates don’t like extreme actions. Liberals are open to more extensive change than moderates and don’t feel tied to traditional ways of approaching things the way conservatives do. Radicals favor throwing out traditions and trying things that have never been done before. Reactionaries want to go back to the way things used to be.

Not a left-right political axis

A further complication to clear communication is that many people—both writers and readers—conceive of our political spectrum today as a horizontal right-left axis. Conservative and liberal are at opposite ends of that horizontal line. Moderate is in the middle.

The political spectrum is really a circle with at least five reference points: reactionary, conservative, moderate, liberal, and radical. Where a person or issue lands on that circle depends on place and time. The left-right axis eliminates the extremes (reactionary and radical) from our routine political lexicon and, as we saw in the Pope Francis story, limits how people can discuss approaches to social or political change beyond the axis.

Policies vs. approach to change

Because social and political context determines where an issue lands in the political spectrum, viewpoints could be liberal at one point, conservative at another, and reactionary or radical in yet another context.

For many Americans today, for example, traditional conservative policies favor limited government, low taxation, fiscal responsibility, free market capitalism, capital punishment, immigration controls, integrity of elections, and a strong national defense. Traditional conservative policies oppose gun control, abortion, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, government-funded healthcare, and expanded benefits for social welfare programs.

Traditional liberal policies favor government actions to defend individual rights (affirmative action, same-sex marriage, abortion), ensure social equality among all citizens through government-funded benefits, facilitate broad participation in elections, promote equitable tax burdens for all, control access to guns, and protect the environment.

Neither of these issue agendas considers how an advocate approaches change. Some of these policies are in place today. Others are not. Still others were once in place but are no longer.

Therefore, if a person is trying to maintain what we have, I argue that he or she is a conservative. Actions to change what we have could be reactionary, moderate, liberal, or radical. The direction or degree of change determines the shorthand label. Moves to go back to something we had before would be reactionary. Moves toward something completely new would be radical. Small, measured changes would be moderate. Major changes would be liberal.

I know as well that the Republican and Democratic party positions on many political issues have shifted throughout American history. Republican-backed policies were not always conservative. Democratic stands were not always liberal.

After the Civil War, for example, one wing of the Republican Party was called radical for its approach to southern Reconstruction. President Theodore Roosevelt, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller—all New Yorkers—represented the liberal wing of the Republican Party between 1900 and 1972.

Republican policies on such topics as immigration and free trade after the Trump presidency differ significantly from what Republicans supported under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Nevertheless, many Americans identify all those presidents as conservative.

Democrats before the 1960s were often seen—especially in the South—as the nation’s conservative party. Today’s Democratic Party includes U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas; U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; and U.S. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

Manchin and Cuellar are often called conservative because they frequently agree with Republicans on policy. Ocasio-Cortez and Omar are prominent members of “the Squad,” a group of young lawmakers who favor what I would term radical policies. Those include Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and total student loan forgiveness. We haven’t had policies like those before.

Self-identities

Self-identities are another factor in how people understand political shorthand labels.

I’ve noticed that people who consider themselves conservative or moderate have no problem embracing those labels. Those individuals usually align their identities with their political party affiliations or opinions on social issues, such as taxation, immigration, voting rights, public education, gun control, or free speech. To those folks, conservative or moderate usually doesn’t relate to the way they approach change.

Those who favor significant social or political change may equate their identities as well with how the person stands on certain issues. But these individuals often don’t want to be called liberal, radical, or reactionary. Persistent Republican messaging since at least the 1990s has made liberal a pejorative term. Radical and reactionary have long had negative connotations. Consequently, folks who advocate significant change call themselves “progressive.”

While liberals, moderates, and conservatives may identify with specific political agendas, each person’s orientation to change may not be consistent from issue to issue or across party lines. Voter opinions on various issues are dynamic and often erratic. As in the Sept. 2 story about Door County, Wisconsin, one shorthand label may not correctly describe where someone stands on all issues.

Between the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade and the 2022 decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson, for example, access to abortion was legal and the accepted norm. Efforts to defend abortion rights in that context, therefore, were conservative (maintaining what we have). Efforts to overturn the Roe decision and return to the former standards were reactionary (going back to the way things used to be).

After the Dobbs decisions, efforts to defend abortion bans are conservative (maintaining the new standard). Efforts to return to the Roe standards are reactionary (going back to the way things used to be). Efforts to go beyond restrictions that were in place before 1973 or to introduce new ways to enforce abortion bans are radical (trying things that have never been done before).

The Washington Post story about Door County, Wisconsin, however, used the longstanding shorthand labels traditionally applied to the abortion debate: Those who oppose the Dobbs decision are liberal or left-learning, not reactionary. Those who want to tighten abortion restrictions beyond pre-Roe standards are conservative, not radical.

I find those traditional labels misleading. I know people disagree with me.

Heated reactions

My pointing out differences between people’s approaches to change and the way they label their political agendas often elicits heated reactions.

My “liberal” friends take offense when I suggest that their defense of current federal or state social programs is conservative and that their efforts to ban assault rifles are reactionary. Current programs are the norm. The United States had an assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004.

My “conservative” friends often get hostile when I say that attacks on civil liberties, efforts to militarize our borders, or moves to eliminate birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ratified in 1868) are radical, not conservative, positions. We haven’t tried these policies before. I get similar responses when I contend that moves to protect election integrity and restrict voter participation could be seen as reactionary. States routinely limited minority access to the ballot box before a series of federal civil rights acts passed from 1957 to 1968.

Because of these unreceptive reactions to my opinions, I’ve reconsidered whether understanding that a political position is radical or reactionary, rather than liberal or conservative, improves political discourse in the long run. The situation may be like the communication problem of using plural pronouns to stand for singular nouns (see Aug. 19 post). Consequently, I don’t bring these topics up much anymore in face-to-face meetings (see spiral of silence theory).

I still think about philosophical inconsistencies, however—especially when I see stories like the seven I’ve cited here. Those thoughts make this post appropriate for this blog.

Overly general?

The Associate Press Stylebook advises journalists to “think carefully” before using shorthand descriptions. Reporters and editors should “consider whether any broad term such as gays, liberals, conservatives, Americans (or any nationality), Latinos (or any ethnicity), supporters of Candidate X, etc., is overly general.”

We all use shorthand descriptions as a communication crutch. These labels help organize our world into categories and supposedly help simplify messaging. But when labels are ambiguous, they may not only hurt clear communication. They may also add to the growing partisan divide in American society today.

Labels help people separate themselves from others. This sorting may encourage folks to avoid interactions with others who have differing opinions. People isolated from diverse viewpoints often see mostly how their opinions differ from those of folks in other groups, not where everyone shares common ground.

While ongoing dialog between people who don’t agree might not change minds, these exchanges should help deepen understanding of contrary viewpoints and counter continued political polarization. Demonizing someone you know is harder than fostering enmity toward nameless, faceless “liberals” or “conservatives”—no matter what you think those words mean.

Copyright © 2023 Douglas F. Cannon