Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Talk Left has further comments on the topic of Libertarians And Liberals discussed in my last post, showing an understanding of the idea missed by several other liberal bloggers:

The continuing faux-negotiations of our Lefty wonks with Libertarians is an interesting exercise but it does suffer from a fatal flaw in my view – our Lefty wonks are attributing ideological rigidity to liberal policy prescriptions that simply does not and has never existed. To be a liberal DOES NOT mean being for big government programs, state intervention and single payer healthcare as a matter of ideology. Rather to be a liberal is to to have a set of values and objectives for which good policies to achieve those values and objectives are sought. The policies need not involve state intervention – they need only work.

Just as libertarianism includes a variety of views ranging from total opposition to any government program to a support of liberty with greater pragmatism on specifics, liberalism also includes a variety of viewpoints. As the post at Talk Left later concludes, liberalism “does not mean ideological purity or political ingenuousness.”  Labels suffer from the problem of lumping together people who might hold different viewpoints on specific issues, while also separating those who agree in many areas. While there are some liberals who have little agreement with some libertarians, there are also a number of liberals and libertarians who hold common views. This is especially true when you get beyond labels and consider the large number of swing voters who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative and might not label themselves at all.