Strip out the noise of
everyday bickering and it is possible to identify the core ideals that make up
the West’s dominant political outlook. They are easily spelt out, even if the
perspective itself is difficult to label. In principle, they include basic
rights and duties, fairness, social justice and a degree of equality. On a more
subtle level, there is also much equivocation about economic growth.
But such terms raise more
questions than they answer. Any one of them can be defined in radically
different ways. That helps explain why political debates often degenerate into
rowing at cross-purposes. It is quite possible to support, say, one notion of
freedom but bitterly oppose another.
There is also the thorny
question of how these goals can be achieved. In the abstract, it is possible to
argue that all sorts of social groups might want to strive for them.
Traditionally, socialists have emphasised the role of organised labour, whereas
conservatives often see business as essentially benign. In practice, the state
is nowadays generally viewed as the body most likely to bring about any
necessary change.
Nevertheless, this is the
perspective informing the arguments of parties that describe themselves as
social democratic, as well as those of many self-proclaimed conservatives. Some
of its adherents, particularly in America, would call themselves liberal, but
many others would recoil at the label. It is certainly a world away from the
classical liberalism that first came to the fore in the eighteenth century.
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