What is a Moderate?

Roger Scrutton has published a provocative essay on political ideology. Writing against the backdrop of modern American politics, Scrutton recites the principles that, in his view, are thought to define conservatives and liberals, respectively.

Conservatives, writes Scrutton, “recognize that social order is hard to achieve and easy to destroy, that it is held in place by discipline and sacrifice, and that the indulgence of criminality and vice is not an act of kindness but an injustice for which all of us will pay,” adding that:

Conservatives therefore maintain severe and — to many people — unattractive attitudes. They favor retributive punishment in the criminal law; they uphold traditional marriage and the sacrifices that it requires; they believe in discipline in schools and the value of hard work and military service. They believe in the family and think that the father is an essential part in it. They see welfare provisions as necessary, but also as a potential threat to genuine charity, and a way both of rewarding antisocial conduct and creating a culture of dependency. They value the hard-won legal and constitutional inheritance of their country and believe that immigrants must also value it if they are to be allowed to settle here. Conservatives do not think that war is caused by military strength, but on the contrary by military weakness, of a kind that tempts adventurers and tyrants. And a properly ordered society must be prepared to fight wars — even wars in foreign parts — if it is to enjoy a lasting peace in its homeland. In short conservatives are a hard and unfriendly bunch who, in the world in which we live, must steel themselves to be reviled and despised by all people who make compassion into the cornerstone of the moral life.

In contrast, liberals, according to Scrutton, “are of course very different.” How so? In Scrutton’s own words:

They see criminals as victims of social hierarchy and unequal power, people who should be cured by kindness and not threatened with punishment. They wish all privileges to be shared by everyone, the privileges of marriage included. And if marriage can be reformed so as to remove the cost of it, so much the better. Children should be allowed to play and express their love of life; the last thing they need is discipline. Learning comes — didn’t Dewey prove as much? — from self-expression; and as for sex education, which gives the heebie-jeebies to social conservatives, no better way has ever been found of liberating children from the grip of the family and teaching them to enjoy their bodily rights. Immigrants are just migrants, victims of economic necessity, and if they are forced to come here illegally that only increases their claim on our compassion. Welfare provisions are not rewards to those who receive them, but costs to those who give — something that we owe to those less fortunate than ourselves. As for the legal and constitutional inheritance of the country, this is certainly to be respected — but it must “adapt” to new situations, so as to extend its protection to the new victim class. Wars are caused by military strength, by “boys with their toys,” who cannot resist the desire to flex their muscles, once they have acquired them. The way to peace is to get rid of the weapons, to reduce the army, and to educate children in the ways of soft power. In the world in which we live liberals are self-evidently lovable — emphasizing in all their words and gestures that, unlike the social conservatives, they are in every issue on the side of those who need protecting, and against the hierarchies that oppress them.

Two questions occur to me. The first is quite simply whether these are accurate representations of conservative and liberal ideology, or whether they are more correctly viewed as caricatures.

Yet there is a second, and more interesting, question. If we assume that Scrutton is correct in his description of conservatives and liberals–and I hesitate to make that assumption because I believe his descriptions leave much to be desired–what does it mean to call oneself a moderate?

When someone calls herself a moderate, is she standing on firm, principled and defensible ground? What values does she claim as hers?

When someone says he is a moderate, does that evoke a refrain as familiar as the one that comes to mind when someone calls herself a conservative, or another calls himself a liberal?

These are difficult questions that require us to peer inward at our own convictions and also to cast our gaze outward at how political ideology is framed and subsequently perceived in public discourse.