http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/28/george-jonas-the-new-york-times-cant-tell-a-liberal-from-a-statist/

A friend sent me a kind of game that newspapers dream up from time to time, especially in the salad days of summer. This one, from The New York Times, took six split decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, asking readers how they would have voted on them.

Voting on Justice Clarence Thomas’ side was considered “conservative,” while agreeing with Justice John Paul Stevens was “liberal.” Ending up most often in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s company was viewed as “centrists” by the NYT.

Gun cases Heller (2008) and Mc-Donald (2010) framed the first question. Should an individual have a right to keep a registered handgun at home? As a classical liberal, I answered yes.

Ah, you’re a conservative on this issue, said the NYT. So were five of the nine justices, including Thomas and Kennedy, and 81% of all Americans. Only Justice Stevens and three of his brethren were liberal.

Pardon? Not letting citizens defend themselves in their own homes is being liberal? You could have fooled me.

Next, I had to vote on favouring or opposing a state ban on late-term — so-called “partial birth” — abortions (Gonzales vs. Carhart, 2007). I opposed a ban, which the NYT agreed was a liberal view. Four of the nine justices shared it, including Stevens. Supporting the ban were Thomas, Kennedy, three other justices, and most (73%) Americans.

Should we let corporations spend their own money on TV ads pushing, or putting down, candidates in a coming election (Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission, 2010)? As a liberal, I said sure, it’s their money. What else?

The NYT considered this a conservative position. The majority of the court shared it, including Thomas and Kennedy. Not Stevens, though. Along with a slight majority of Americans (58%), Stevens wanted to limit the ability of corporations to take part in the political process.

The NYT called this the liberal view.

Next came a 2008 case called Boumediene vs. Bush. It asked whether non-citizen terrorist suspects held in military prisons should be able to challenge their detention in civilian courts. I answered yes, obviously.

The NYT did indeed consider this a liberal opinion, shared by the majority of the Supremes, including Stevens and Kennedy. Thomas and most Americans didn’t, though. Sixty percent would have denied non-citizens suspected of terrorism their day in court.

The next question came from a 2008 case called Kennedy vs. Louisiana. Should government be allowed to put a child rapist to death? I said no. Liberals want to narrow the death penalty, not expand it.

This time, the NYT agreed, as did the majority (5-4) of justices, including Stevens and Kennedy. Thomas and most Americans (67%) took the opposite view, and would have hanged child rapists high.

Lastly, Graham vs. Florida asked whether a state should be allowed to sentence a person under age 18 to life in prison for armed robbery. I said yes, for states in a federation should be able, within reason, to deal with their own robbers as they see fit, but only Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia saw it my way. Six out of nine justices disagreed, including both Kennedy and Stevens, along with 64% of the public.

Overall, the NYT considered me a centrist. I saw eye to eye with “conservative” Justice Thomas and “liberal” Justice Stevens only in three out of six cases, but agreed with the Court’s swing vote, middle-of-the-road Justice Kennedy, in four.

To me, the game demonstrated that America’s leading newspaper can tell left from right on the political spectrum far more reliably than liberal from illiberal. It calls left-wing positions “liberal,” no matter how illiberal they are, and right-wing positions “conservative,” regardless of how liberal they may be.

Letting an individual keep a handgun at home for self-defence is “conservative” only in that it conserves America’s founding tradition of liberty. Otherwise, it’s as liberal as you get. Outlawing guns or criminalizing self-defence is statism, not liberalism.

Illiberal people consider it routine to ban conduct of which they disapprove; liberal people don’t. If a statist person doesn’t ban abortion, late-term or otherwise, it’s because he has no trouble with it. If he did, he’d ban it. A liberal may not ban abortion even though he has a lot of trouble with it, because he has even more trouble with telling people how to live.

The NYT thinks letting a woman do what she wants with her body is liberal, but letting a corporation do what it wants with its money is conservative. In fact, both are liberal positions. What’s illiberal is letting a woman do what she wants with someone else’s body, namely her fetus.

A liberal can be fair to his enemies, which is why he’d let an alleged foreign terrorist have his day in court. Statists can only be fair to their friends. Confusion sets in when we mistake left-wing statists for liberals, right-wing statists for conservatives, and actual liberals for mastodons. Like the NYT.

Some say it doesn’t matter. Labeling is bad anyway. I disagree. Labeling is good. That’s why pharmacists do it. Mislabelling is bad.