What the Left has to conserve

The most recent revolution in American politics—they seem to come around every two years now—was a revolution of the Right. With cries of “take our government back,” the Tea Party movement mobilized millions of Americans in support of Republican candidates, mostly on the basis of promises to vastly diminish government spending on social programs and, at their most extreme, to destroy several departments of the federal government. While much of this rhetoric will never come to fruition and many of these ideas will be jettisoned by the opening gavel of the 112th Congress, the Tea Party’s economic views symbolize a shift that has taken place in American political discourse over the past few decades: The Right has taken the radical position on the issues of poverty and inequality, while the Left has adopted the conservative one. This shift has not only destabilized the definitions of liberal and conservative—it has also had a profound effect on the activism on Columbia’s campus. Afraid to see ourselves as conservative in any way, our Left-leaning student body has begun to neglect the issues of poverty and inequality.

Edmund Burke expressed the classic conservative viewpoint when he described government as “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” This notion of conservatism rests not on abstract ideas of small government and laissez-faire economic policies, but rather on a commitment to received tradition—Burke’s test of political institutions was not whether they fit our idea of perfect, rational justice, but whether they have served society well over time. In this conception, conservatism does not represent the attempt to enshrine fixed principles into law. Instead, it seeks to preserve the best traditions of “those who are dead” for the benefit of “those who are living” and “those who are to be born.”

Whether members of the current Right admit it or not, the government has entered into the tradition of helping reduce economic inequality. Progressive taxation, subsidized health coverage, income supplements for the elderly—these programs have become established features of our political landscape, and although they may not fit well with the Tea Party’s abstract ideology of free markets and small government, they have served our society well in the decades and generations since their establishment.

Liberal voices in the United States recognize the importance of protecting these now-traditional levers against inequality. From Democratic politicians to intellectuals on the Left, contemporary liberals more often speak in terms of returning and preserving—returning to the rates of taxation on the wealthy of the Eisenhower era, or preserving Social Security and Medicare—than in terms of destroying and overturning. When Republican Senator-elect Mike Lee of Utah speaks of dismantling the Department of Education and repealing the 16th Amendment (ratified almost a hundred years ago), he frightens liberals precisely because of our conservative tendencies. Afraid of what these revolutionary steps might do, we respond by hearkening back to the good old days when our government took seriously its responsibility to aid the less fortunate.

As the Left (broadly defined) has realized that, in fact, it has quite a lot to conserve, the Left-leaning activist community at Columbia has reacted with a distinct sense of unease. Our veneration of our radical history has made Columbia students see only radical causes as worthy of our attention, causing us to neglect the issues of poverty and inequality on which liberals and progressives now occupy what must be called the more conservative position. Students are more likely to organize around the issues of discrimination, international human rights, and the environment—in part because we see these issues as places where more forward-looking change, more upending of traditional systems and assumptions, needs to happen. The attractiveness to our moral consciences of sensational problems—such as refugee crises or global environmental catastrophes—over systemic ones undoubtedly accounts for some of this tendency, but the conservative tone of current progressive arguments about wealth disparities also plays a role in turning Columbia students away from these issues.

This inclination to ignore the issues of poverty and inequality reflects a serious problem in our way of thinking. Economic inequality has become the central political fact of our time, and the widening of the gap between rich and poor represents the most important social trend of the past 30 years. Older ways of confronting inequality were by no means perfect, but failing to recognize what we have to conserve—and failing to argue for it as persistently and as loudly as we argue for what we hope to change—means letting fear of a label prevent us from confronting a pervasive injustice.

Sam Klug is a Columbia College junior majoring in history. He serves on the executive board of the Roosevelt Institution. Core Matters runs alternate Thursdays.