“Social Liberalization” in Opposition to “Social Conservatism”

A couple of days ago, I wrote a briefly about the question of social conservatism in retrospect. Namely, if every prior generation of social conservatives turned out to be wrong about the effects of social liberalization, why should we assume today’s social conservatives are any different?

The replies to that post on social media make it obvious I should’ve clarified what I mean by “social liberalization.” “Mao’s cultural revolution was bad, American social conservatives objected to Maoism, therefore social conservatives were right (at least in that instance) about the dangers of social liberalization” is an objection if my argument had been “Social conservatives are always wrong about the dangers of leftism.” But that’s not my argument.

I chose “social liberalization” carefully. In the crude framing common to American politics, we tend to label anything the left does as “liberal” and anything the right does as “conservative.” But that equivalence often fails to hold. “Social liberalism” does not mean “whatever progressives or leftists want or do.” It means to be more liberal in social matters.

Thus, “social liberalization.” To to liberalize in the social sphere is to lift restrictions preventing people from leading the kinds of lives they want. It’s to make people socially more free. We socially liberalize when society and culture shift to be more open to, and less restrictive of, gay people. We socially liberalize when we turn cultural norms against racism and break down racial hierarchies. We socially liberalize when we embrace religious pluralism, or when we move beyond structural misogyny.

Historically, whenever we’ve sought to bring individuals more social freedom, and particularly when those individuals are members of marginalized groups, social conservatives have told us the results will be dire. Accepting gay people will destroy the institution of marriage. Recognizing gender equality will degrade the very idea of merit. Etc.

But if “social liberalization” simply means giving people more freedom within the social sphere, then we can find plenty of instance when the political left has opposed it. And if that’s the case, then “social liberalization” can’t be a synonym for “progressivism” or “the left.”

Thus, to restate the thesis of my original post, social conservatives frequently tell us that granting more social freedoms will lead to dire consequences. There is more social freedom today than there was in the past, historical social conservatives also said giving more freedom would be bad, and yet few of us want to go back to the reduced freedom of our ancestors. If that’s the case, then we should view contemporary social conservative claims in that context, push for even greater social freedom via social liberalization, and be confident our descendants will thank us for it.