College is, and should be, a place to openly express your political views.

A common stance is the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” attempt to strike a balance between two very divided parties.

While I agree that partisan politics are destructive to our democracy, it must be made clear that claiming to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative is a contradiction.

This phrase refers to someone who advocates for progressive liberal values, such as health care for all and government programs that support infrastructure, but still believe in conservative fiscal policies such as decentralized government and low taxes.

What these people fail to understand is that these liberal values can’t be executed with conservative fiscal policy.

Liberalism is more than saying “I support these programs.”

It’s a machine that relies on taxpayer money as an input to create government programs.

If you are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, you are saying you support the output, but aren’t willing to supply the input.

It can’t be broken down into a social element and a fiscal element because these two rely on each other.

Abortion rights have been a controversial topic recently, and it serves as a good example of this contradiction.

If you claim you support Planned Parenthood but don’t want your taxes going towards it, you’re not really supporting it.

This can also be applied to environmental issues.

If you believe climate change is a real problem but don’t believe that the government should be spending money on renewable energy, then you’re effectively a conservative.

You’re saying that you care about the issue, as long as you don’t have to do anything about it.

This isn’t to say that one party is right and the other is wrong.

Believing in conservative values and supporting them with conservative fiscal policy is still a rational argument.

Additionally, it’s completely reasonable to have moderate political views, but it’s important to understand that fiscal policy and social policy are inseparable.

You can’t simply pick and choose your favorite conservative values and liberal values if they inherently contradict each other.

The idea of being socially liberal and fiscally conservative is completely false.