Do you enjoy being stereotyped? Dismissed by someone as, "one of those "conservatives?" Or written off as   "liberal?"  What about
"moderate?" Or "populist?"

There is a well known national conceptual framework for rough, preliminary political  classification of ourselves and others regarding  how we evaluate government intervention in two areas: the economy and  moral issues. Let's review them.

(1)  "Populists" support state intervention in both economics and morals.

(2)  "Liberals" (aka "Leftists") want government to regulate the economy but to keep hands  off morals.

(3) "Conservatives" (aka "Rightists") are the mirror images of Liberals. They want Government to keep its cotton picking hands off the economy but to  enforce values and morality.

(4)  "Libertarians" want no Government intervention anywhere, any time: not in morals not in the market, either.

These rough distinctions were made in a 1984 study commissioned by the Cato Institute, BEYOND LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE. The authors were William Maddox and Stuart Lilie. Not everybody in America  falls neatly into these four categories, but many voters do.

In 1984 Maddox and Lilie found that 30% of  Democratic voters were
liberals, with 37% being populists, 11% conservative and 7% libertarians. That is, fully 2/3 of Democrats favored Government intervention in the economy.

And Republicans? They were 27% conservative, 29% libertarian, 13% liberal and 18% populist. So 56% of Republicans opposed Government intervention in the economy.

Independents broke down 25% liberal, 23% libertarian, 20% populist, 17% conservative.

Today, 16 years later, pollsters divide up voters in hundreds of ways. But it remains helpful to call ourselves and others by those four widely
accepted names. Reading from left to right, from maximum government intervention to none in both the market and morals, the four basic inclinations are

In plain talking daily living we tend to view populists as a sub-species of liberals. And similarly we lump together libertarians and conservatives. We might, however, find it more helpful to accept that millions of Americans are left of liberal  and perhaps just as many millions are  right of conservative.

Even now in the year 2000 the base of the national Democratic party is
mainly populist and liberal. while, by contrast, the base of the
Republicans is primarily conservative and libertarian.

The four-fold division is also described and discussed by Jeff Riggenbach in IN PRAISE OF DECADENCE, 1998, esp. p.24.

In his 1991 book, WHY AMERICANS HATE POLITICS,  E.J. Dionne, Jr. takes yet another cut at categorizing voters. He sees  us as either  traditionalists or libertarians on any given issue. Both are found in the two  major parties. And most of the time libertarians cannot stand traditionalists, and vice versa. The task, for example,  of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is to make these two Republican wings work in harness. At the same time they must also reach out to churchgoers, hunters, the married, blue collar workers, smokers and on and on. There is no end to pigeonholing.

The fastest growing national group, especially in Western North Carolina, is the libertarians. Libertarians demand as much freedom to be left alone by government as they can get away with. That means, in practice, as much liberty as the courts  and the conservative-liberal-populist majority will permit them to enjoy.

Finally, a commonly heard overly simplified division in these parts is that between

The children and grandchildren of Americans who enthusiastically created the League of Nations, United Nations, NATO and the Organization of American States are today increasingly uneasy with  internationalism's perceived threats to national and personal liberties.

Will the best pigeonholers win? Probably. Alas.

-OOO-

 for INDEPENDENT TORCH