ATTEMPTING TO DEFINE AN ELEPHANT? The Chicago Tribune published the efforts of University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone to take some of the pejorative out of the term "liberal." Professor Stone made the mistake of laying down a ten-point program, which inspired Arnold Kling to offer ten libertarian points at Tech Central Station, and Jane Galt to essay ten conservative points at her own site. Stephen Bainbridge also comments at Tech Central. There's lots of give-and-take in the comment sections at the various sites, and probably lots of reaction that others have come across. For example, John Rosenberg has some minor objections to Professor Stone up at Discriminations. (Interchange reports all via Econ Log.)

The problem with all such exercises, as more than one commenter noted, is that attempts to aggregate a small number of principles into an ideology can serve more to make like-minded people comfortable with their prejudices. I confront that problem whenever I offer the public policy course. A collection of case studies I use attempts to offer a "Conservative," a "Liberal," and a "Radical" analysis of a public policy problem. In economics, it's relatively simple. In a "Conservative" analysis, emergent distributed networks (such as markets) demonstrate great flexibility in allocating resources and coping with ineffiencies. (But is that "receptive to difference," and thus "liberal"? I find myself saying "disregard what you hear on talk radio" a lot.) A "Liberal" analysis identifies a "market failure" that can be "corrected" with a properly-designed public policy. (But is that "exalting order at the cost of liberty", hence "illiberal"?) The "Radical" analysis focuses on the conflict of interest between profits-as-signals inherent in markets, "failing" or not, and profits-as-ends for traders. (That's always the most frustrating position to teach, because, although we allocate some resources by rules that don't involve buying and selling, that argument doesn't generalize well.)