I don’t like being called a conservative. I am a classical liberal. I believe in individual liberty, free markets, a liberal education, and liberal democracy as the solutions to all of our social problems. And I am proud that these conceptual achievements are part of my cultural history. I make no excuses for my cultural heritage, and I celebrate its achievements.

But when I say I am a classical liberal, I receive blank looks and I am often confused with American liberals who are actually Democrats. So, I end up saying I am a conservative to avoid the inevitable confusion. This leads me to the most common critique of conservatives: they have no solutions, and they only point out problems.

The contemporary socialist narrative is that government must provide solutions to society’s problems. Social contract theory, which, paraphrasing Hobbes, suggests that we agree to give up some rights to live in a safe and orderly civil society, as opposed to an animal society where life is hardly worth living in a war of all against all. But this doesn’t give the government the right to do whatever it likes.

In a civil society, we do not give up our right to self defence, but we do moderate our behaviour so that peace is the norm and violence is an outlier. We allow the government to control the application of the means of violence through the military and the police. Provided we have safeguards against monistic power, as outlined by Locke, we do not need to overthrow a government unless the government breaks the social contract (effectively the agreement to look after the people so governed) as outlined by Rousseau.

These are the theoretical pillars of liberal democracy: government is required to look after its people or otherwise, it can rightly be overthrown – and in its modern sense, peacefully at election time. People today often forget the beauty of adversarial, two-party politics. If someone can come up with a better solution than two-party liberal democracy, I am all ears.

But if you haven’t been to the DDR Museum in Berlin before you speak, then wash your mouth out! Socialism offers solutions that create unintended consequences.

Yet here is the problem with contemporary politics. Governments of socialist persuasions have, as part of their long march through the institutions of liberal democracies, managed to usurp the very principles of liberal democracy.

Fundamental to usurping liberal democracy has been a belief that government can solve social problems. The anti-democratic nature of such a belief is based on the idea that somehow the government knows best. People forget that we elect politicians to represent us instead of electing politicians to do whatever they like.

But politicians often confuse electoral outcomes based on less than one-third of the primary vote as a mandate for massive change with their own inflated sense of importance. Politicians forget that when they are effectively rejected by two-thirds of first preference votes, this is not grounds for carte blanche political reform. Instead, it is a case of putting forward policy that can be assessed on its merits.

Regrettably, Australian governments tend to think they can break promises and up-end Australian society as they see fit. And herein lies the problem for conservatives.

Conservatives tend to rail against attempts by the government of the day to change society, especially when the government’s vision is socialist in intent or works in the extreme. Socialism in liberal democracies means that Peter is robbed to pay Paul. The Albanese government’s recent broken promise with the previously legislated Stage 3 Tax Cuts is a case in point: Albanese thinks it is smart politics to wedge the Opposition to either stand in the way of tax cuts or be seen to support tax cuts for ‘the rich’.

The truth is that all Australians are worse off, tax reform is now further away than ever, and the Coalition will tactically bend to the nonsensical narrative rather than stand behind its classical liberal principles. The Coalition will effectively help Labor to pay Paul while hoping that Peter will just somehow forget he was robbed.

It is clever politics by Albanese but a black mark against the Coalition for now.

So why is it that conservatives have no solutions? I have been accused of similar by a local council wannabee who hasn’t the first clue of public policy.

Throwaway lines like ‘you have no solutions’ hide behind a much more sinister ideology: that somehow government is the solution.

Take for example the never-ending gender issues that are being supported by governments and public libraries at all levels in promoting adult performers parading as children’s story-time readers. On what planet was this ever acceptable?

Sure, you want to have a drag queen read to your kids in your own home? Then do it. But don’t expect taxpayers to have to foot the bill and pretend to be happy about it. This is not about equity, diversity, or anything else other than using public funds to push identity politics to the extreme. It is unconscionable and needs to be called out as such.

In every other situation if I was talking about my sex life at work I’d be in trouble. Using taxpayer funds to talk about one’s sex life to children is wrong. Period.

Conservatives have no solutions because socialists have solutions that are abhorrent.

I have a good friend who is my political antithesis. But we can have discussions yet respect each other’s point of view. And our system of government enables it to happen. Many of my academic colleagues disagree with me but they do not dispute my right to have a voice in public policy. I like living this way. It’s called liberal democracy. My forebears fought for the lifestyle I now enjoy, and I choose to enjoy it in the way that they intended.

But we’ve lost something so peculiar to liberal democratic practice that we now look to government to solve our problems and we prevent citizens from debating policy. Such a focus is misguided and creates perverse outcomes.

For example, in 1960s Britain, criminals used the anti-homosexual laws to blackmail gay men. The police turned a blind eye to the blackmailers because the law was clearly morally unjust. The issue was highlighted in Dirk Bogarde’s 1961 film, The Victim. This came from a time when art focused on real social injustices and not just the victim mentality of those who want to get more than they deserve. The government had caused the problem. It wasn’t the solution.

Today, governments offer solutions that effectively take away rights from some to give to others. This is the antithesis of liberal democracy.

Instead, conservatives – read ‘classical liberals’ – want everyone to have equality of opportunity. In Australia, this might even include such non-controversial ideas as adding dental services to Medicare.

This could be means-tested, but like education, healthcare is one of the great equalisers that allows anyone, regardless of their background, to have the same opportunity for a healthy life as those who can afford it.

(The Greens have hijacked this idea, but it was never theirs – their lollipops and rainbows policies promise the world because they can never be delivered or tested in reality.)

Socialists want everyone to have equality of outcome, where we all get the same regardless of merit or hard work. They intervene in our lives not to create a level playing field in health and education where it counts, but to control the economy and our behaviour for ideological reasons and not the common good.

Capital gains tax on the family home and removing negative gearing on investment properties will be next. Then when the housing supply dries up, the government will have to provide public housing as the upward spiral of control tries to fix the never-ending perverse outcomes. We all know where that leads.

So next time you hear a Woke opponent accuse conservatives of not having solutions, it is because government intervention in our private lives doesn’t work. Conservatives believe that individuals will pursue their own happiness if government provides everyone with the same opportunities.

And that’s a solution worth voting for.

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