No, they weren't all liberals. Many of the great writers
were quite conservative, in fact.
Writers usually express political and philosophical
leanings. Shakespeare is the only exception I have found. Somehow, he
maintained philosophical integrity but resisted the temptation to take a side
in politics. Instead, he lambasted all forms of "ambition" for
leadership, whether liberal, conservative, or any other. In Shakespeare's mind,
it seems, any desire to assume a leadership role is the seed of corruption. I
can find no exceptions to this rule in his work.
Most other writers intentionally create situations designed
to reinforce their political, as well as their philosophical views. Dickens,
who ranks as England's second or third most renowned author, was an outspoken
liberal, famous for demonizing the corruption of wealth. A 20th Century
American author, Steinbeck, did pretty much the same during the Great
Depression, when capitalism became a scapegoat for all the nation's woes.
Harper Lee eviscerated the racial prejudices of a highly conservative Southern
town.
Authors "stack the deck," of course. They create
situations in which all the worst caricatures of their targeted villains
blossom. To Lee's credit, she at least admits being one of the many villains
who took a long time to grow out of her ignorance.
Two examples of superb conservative authors are William
Golding and John Knowles.
In Lord of the Flies, Golding exposes human frailties and makes a case
for the importance of rules in preventing chaos:
When a planeload of schoolboys (most of them prepubescent)
crash-lands on an island, all adults perish, and a large number of the students
survive. Thus begins a profoundly interesting experiment and a probing inquiry
into human nature. The liberals among them intend to establish a utopian
society and have "fun" until the day they're rescued. Ralph
demonstrates natural leadership qualities and immediately becomes the
"Chief." But he carries all the weaknesses of an overconfident
liberal. The supreme idealist among them, he is much too generous with his
trust and fails to confront the ominous signs of rage growing in his
"Chief" adversary, Jack. Pulling blinders over his own eyes at the
height of his power, he wastes several opportunities while Piggy, who suffers
from near literal blindness himself but clearly perceives the danger, attempts
to alert him and set him on the path to asserting power. As liberals often do,
Ralph realizes much too late that Piggy was his "one true friend."
The liberals neglect their duty to establish and enforce order, and a
primitive, brutal, tribal menace, "fear itself," murders the one boy
among them who is courageous enough to face the truth, plunging all of them
into a spiral of self-destruction.
Knowles' A Separate Peace is about schoolboys too; they're a bit older. It takes place at an
aristocratic prep school during World War II:
A friendship goes stale after an "accident" in a
tree. Eventually, a new friendship grows between them. This one is more fragile,
and although they set facts relating to the "incident" aside for a
time, they build their new friendship on a genuine trust, which both boys
endeavor to nurture very carefully. Just when it appears that they will be all
right, their "do-gooder liberal" friends, who can't help delving into
the mystery of what really happened in the tree, blow it all to pieces. They
lay waste to a delicate love. Yes, the story is complicated by overtones of
homophobia. No, Gene and Finny are not gay. One of the two friends, the
liberal, perceives the cause of the accident to be merely a "blind
impulse." The conservative holds himself to a higher standard and probes
more deeply into it. He defines it as "ignorance in the human heart."
In both of these literary masterpieces, fear is not
something to be slighted. "There's nothing to fear but fear itself,"
said FDR, the liberal President. But fear, ladies and gentlemen, fear is not
nothing. Fear is irrational and impulsive. "Fear itself," as any good
conservative will tell you, must be faced up to and must be dealt with.
I always tried to balance the teaching of conservative and
liberal writers during the course of a school year. I'd teach To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies,
one in the fall and the other in the spring. I'd also make a point to inform my
students of their liberal or conservative bias, and I'd prove it by locating
passages in those books that clearly identified the authors' sympathies and
philosophical perspectives.
If you need more, you can look up my study guides on those
books at TeachersPayTeachers.com. (Just click the link to my store.) You can
get a lot of information by reading the preview downloads, which cost nothing.
Another resource you should check out is my new graphic
organizer, which attempts to categorize some of the great authors with regard
to their political tendencies as well as their degree of optimism and pessimism
about the world. That item is designed to address this very question. In fact,
the question is in the title. Once again, the free preview offers a large share
of the substance of it:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Were-the-Great-Authors-All-Liberals-A-Graphic-Organizer-Tells-the-Story-7-Pages
