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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Get Four
|  | JANUARY 27, 2004
By Thane Peterson Where Can Liberals Go to Get Respect? [Page 2 of 2] BUSTED TRUST. Sappy as it sounds, one of the strengths of liberalism is that it admits the power of love, tolerance, and community in human affairs. Traditional conservatism does this, too, of course, though with different values. The trouble is that many conservatives give tolerance short shrift. They also fail to acknowledge all that would be lost if they had prevailed in the past. Without liberal activists, there would have been no civil rights movement, no equality, or even the vote for women. How many black conservatives would favor returning to the 1930s norms of racial justice? How many conservative women would agree to give up the right to vote? Essentially conservatives argue, "Our predecessors were wrong, but you can trust our judgment this time around." Oh, sure we can. Yet deep faith in pure market forces -- a belief that unites traditional and libertarian conservatives -- is now so prevalent in American life that it often blinds us to rational alternatives. A good example is mainstream American agriculture's almost wholesale adoption of genetically modified crops. This may -- as its adherents claim -- make all the economic sense in the world. But the plain fact is that huge majorities of people in most foreign nations are suspicious of food containing GMOs and refuse to eat it. SERVICE ECONOMY? In my view, U.S. agriculture risks being frozen out of export markets around the world. A trade policy based on battering foreigners to buy food they consider poison makes sense only if you believe market efficiency will always trump cultural values -- which it plainly won't. An even more telling example is the nation's reaction -- or lack of reaction -- to the loss of manufacturing jobs. The U.S. is now steadily becoming the world's first large service economy, with virtually no manufacturing capabilities of its own. Pure faith in untrammeled free-marketplace economics tells you everything's going to be fine, but logic tells you a classic "liberal" strategy -- an industrial policy -- might be in order. That's because in a war or other major crisis it would be suicide to let all domestic production of essential goods disappear. That's why the U.S. government already owns or subsidizes tank production and shipyards -- we need tanks and ships to wage war. Similarly, it wouldn't be wise to let domestic farming dwindle to the point where we can't feed our own population. And it would be wise for conservatives to get behind some "liberal" policy initiatives, such as promoting alternative fuels and energy conservation. That probably won't happen because, at least for now, liberal values and policies are in disrepute. As a nation, we're incapable of saying, "Look, let's decide where our common values would lead us and intervene selectively in the market to promote those values." Instead, we'll pretend to maintain market freedom while intervening on an ad hoc basis, as President Bush did when he temporarily protected the steel industry. Dozens of industries will get huge government handouts in the name of national security. And I suspect it will cost a lot more and be a lot less effective than if we just admitted we need an industrial policy. But then, that's a liberal notion, so it must be loony.
 Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online. Follow his weekly Moveable Feast column, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Beth Belton Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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