Have you read Bastiat’s Sophisms? That was a response, instrumental in the development of free market capitalism (although it was influential on Marx’s thinking, too), to several then-prevailing policies that look remarkably similar to FDR’s second bill. Free market capitalism is notably optimistic that “the means for improving peoples’ lives could be discovered and implemented in some form through reason and science”. It’s suspicion is directed more towards public reason, and as you say, the importance of economic inequality.

http://tinyurl.com/32v2xf7

Certainly. And that’s open for debate. But the sentiment goes back to Jefferson (and “a href=”http://books.google.com/books?id=cj00Zjh1XIkC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=%22Whenever+there+is+in+any+country+uncultivated+lands+and+unemployed+poor,+it+is+clear+that+the+laws+of+property+have+been+so+far+extended+as+to+violate+natural+right.%22&source=bl&ots=cYpyueIDXq&sig=vsQxWGv6UppVgPH5wDGd6IohQlQ&hl=en&ei=xTgzTIiDMefnnQf-vpD3Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22Whenever%20there%20is%20in%20any%20country%20uncultivated%20lands%20and%20unemployed%20poor%2C%20it%20is%20clear%20that%20the%20laws%20of%20property%20have%20been%20so%20far%20extended%20as%20to%20violate%20natural%20right.%22&f=false”>this is often quoted as being a basis for New Deal political philosophy)

I don’t think the economic right would argue that there is a limit to what can be achieved by reason (in the sense meant here), or that optimism is misplaced.

I think if you take the views of the traditionalist and economic libertarian strands of conservatism, there is a kind of cynicism about public reason that can follow. Both strands in their modern forms formed in reaction to the New Deal. There is a great talk Sam Tanenhaus gave to AEI a few years ago where he talked about the development of “Revanchist” conservatism (which, as you can see by the end of this talk, is no believer in public reason):

http://www.aei.org/event/1550

There is a tendency that’s developed to effectively sabotage reasonable public conversation that could result in government action (and yes, this is in the American context–this is an American blog, and Chris writes American books)…

They would argue, I think, that the means proposed would not achieve the result the left thinks it would, and that many of the concepts the left associates with such progress don’t have the tight connection the left thinks they do.

That’s about what I was saying. Again, I think a most of the conflict has its roots in New Deal related debates about what “technocrats” can and can’t do, and the importance of economic inequality. A good dialog on the American liberal take on this can be heard in this Cuomo/Krugman discussion:

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/407?in=&out=

I disagree.If they were saying only Liberals could be atheists, then you are changing the definition of Atheism.Does atheism mean a Lack of Belief or a Lack of Belief and also Liberal?.I say its a Lack of Belief period.Anything else could pretty much go.

It depends on why they are necessitous.

Again, socialism and belief in the power of the state are distinct concepts from liberalism. It’s true that there are people who believed in, and helped to develop, both – but that is primarily because in many cases society and the state was illiberal, so if anyone wanted to allow new things to be done they would necessarily link the liberalism to do so with their new idea. It depends entirely on historical context.

I think in you’re final paragraph, you’re using the American labels for the economic left and right – fair enough, it has become common usage. I don’t think the economic right would argue that there is a limit to what can be achieved by reason (in the sense meant here), or that optimism is misplaced. They would argue, I think, that the means proposed would not achieve the result the left thinks it would, and that many of the concepts the left associates with such progress don’t have the tight connection the left thinks they do. We all want to go to the same sort of place, but our maps of the local terrain for getting there are different.

What you say about libertarian beliefs also doesn’t fit my own experience. Free market capitalism relies explicitly in its justification on individuals judging values – their reasoning isn’t purely instrumental – and Social Darwinism is widely rejected – historically, that particular movement was associated more with the left. (As it was then, not as it is now.)

But trying to explain the nuances of different world-views to their ideological opponents is notoriously difficult.

I think liberalism’s link to positivism can be found is a number of places. Auguste Compte, the inventor of the term, was a 19th century socialist and a believer in the power of the state and scientific reason to improve peoples’ lives:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte

In the modern context, in a very different time and place, FDR famously said “Necessitous men are not free.” And then proceeded to turn to “techocratic” experts to help figure out how to bring the government in to help correct the problems that the Great Depression had caused, with the idea that with the fall of the Jeffersonian small landholder, individualism had to be shored up with some form of state intervention (again, “necessitous men are not free”). So you could say FDR and Comte shared in some sense an optimism that the means for improving peoples’ lives could be discovered and implemented in some form through reason and science in some form…

(It seems to me that’s where the catfight breaks out. Conservatives would accuse liberals of unrealistic pretensions of how much they can do using reason, arguing there’s an excess of optimism on that count (see Michael Oakeshott). And of course the libertarian variation is a bit different, in that they have lots of optimism about the individuals’ instrumental reason, that it has the power to overcome deficits of aggregate demand, accidents of birth (or that some sort of Darwinian force is at work, weeding out the unfortunate accidents of birth for the good of all, etc. ..))

Everybody relies on social norms and preconceptions. It’s just that liberals rely on liberal norms and preconceptions.

It’s the way the human mind works, and if some of the findings of Artificial Intelligence research apply generally, probably the way it has to work. The world is too complicated to decode from scratch every time – it has to be simplified and the gaps and ambiguities filled in to fit into a pre-existing conceptual framework.

People have to be trained to seek proof – it doesn’t come naturally – and even then they inevitably apply it selectively. Proof-seeking is just one position, one social norm out of many.

One could look at it this way – now that the expectation of logic and proof have been institutionalised as part of the Western tradition since the Enlightenment, the preservation of logic and proof as the primary means of deciding issues has become the conservative position, and allowing the use of New Age, Post Modern, emotional intuition requires one to be more “intellectually liberal” about method.

Positivism is not liberalism, and they don’t always go together – that’s why they invented different words for them.

The words “conservative” and “liberal” are heavily context dependent. Any given person will generally have a set of beliefs falling across both categories, and even beliefs where it depends on what perspective you look at it from. It’s hard to see it unless you are well-practised at paradigm-switching, and many people live their lives without ever noticing it.

The philosophy is complicated, and the terminology is commonly misused. Confusion is perfectly understandable.