Elevator Ideology

It's an ominous sign when The American Prospect magazine needs to sponsor a contest to try and define the core principles of liberalism.

Conservatives frame it this way: They believe in equality of opportunity, but their liberal counterparts want equality of outcome. A level playing field is a good thing, they suggest, just don't expect that there won't be winners and losers.

But how is opportunity measured? Genetics, education, values, natural disasters and blind luck - each one of these has influence on our lives. Only a few of these can be managed by taxation, law, or policy. More importantly, do conservatives want to actively create opportunity, or offer a more clever justification of laissez-faire?

A "that's-the-way-the-ball-bounces" approach eventually runs up against the ethics of Christian compassion, ostensibly the soup-du-jour for conservatives. But J.C. wasn't known for splitting hairs between poor people "with credibility" and those who got there by blowing their chances.