Posted on 01/22/2021 6:18:11 AM PST by OKSooner
For open discussion, definitions of these two terms and comparative discussion are invited, particularly in the classical and in the modern context.
The same discussion is invited for the term "Conservatism", in the original meaning and modern usage.
"Vanity fee paid."
Conservative: Leave us alone!
Liberal: NO!.........................................
Well played.
Succinct............................
Libertarian = Leave ME alone.
All of liberalism is based upon one notion:
Somebody somewhere is enjoying their life and we must stop it..............................
Summing up so far:
Conservative: Leave us alone!
Liberal: NO!.
Libertarian = Leave ME alone.
You need to greatly narrow the scope of your question. I’d suggest making it pertain to usage in the USA only, and possibly to current use only.
With that in mind, politically speaking, a Conservative is one who believes the US Constitution is a legal document that needs to be followed. A liberal is one who has little to no understanding nor respect for the Constitution, and whose goal is to move the US away from a Constitutional Representative Republic and toward some form of Marxism.
Unless it’s a pan sexual beastial relationship. Those are “good.” LOL.
Rather I would chuck the whole idea that there is a dimension with "liberal" on one side and "conservative" on the other. Or even "left" on one side and "right" on the other.
The reality is closer to there is whatever is popular with the intellectuals of society, which we can call Left. This is "intellectuals" in the sense that Thomas Sowell defines them, that is people whose entire end product of their labors is ideas. Not ideas put to action, like engineers, doctors, or software developers etc. But simply ideas NOT put into practice.
These professional "intellectuals" are not judged by the success of their ideas, but by how impressed other intellectuals and those that follow intellectuals and try to gain prestige by doing so.
The ideas that become popular are not plain common sense ones, but ones that excite passions about progress over traditions and such that have held people back. Essentially the snake oil of political ideas that promise the sky, but are not realistic and deliver only disaster when implemented.
This core of intellectual popular ideas is roughly what is the "Left". What people call the "Right" is not really a particular core of ideas. It is the rest of people who do not buy the ridiculous snake oil and argue about ideas in a realistic way. Who are not part of the brain-dead hive mind. It includes very diverse viewpoints, including materialist hedonists and orthodox Christians and a few nutty conspiracy theorists. It really is not a particular ideology.
They call themselves progressives now. Not liberals. I call everyone a Regressive. There is absolutely nothing pro-gressive about them.
Looking at liberals’ mugshots, I can see why they would feel that way.....................
They are leftists.
Liberalism in the classic sense draws upon and inculcates the concept that a free individual may draw from all of human experience to live a life not of ease, but of full satisfaction as a human being.
Liberalism in the current sense is a perversion of all of the above, seeking instead to nullify individual pursuits in the interest of a collective morass.
Conservatism is a more recent concept. It does not suffer a harsh duality, but its varying definitions tend toward the preservation of healthy institutions and traditions whether individual or corporate in nature.
Conservatives are just that - conservative; liberals have to define themselves since they don’t know what they really are. They categorize themselves into: progressive, moderate, activists, centrists, etc.
Thank you.
I like your start on Conservatism as “tending toward the preservation of healthy institutions and traditions.”
I suppose the next question would be the challenge of who defines whether something is healthy or not. For the Left, nothing about America is healthy. Any unhappiness, in anyone anywhere, means that the whole set of institutions and traditions must obviously be flawed and we should start from the ground up, manufacturing new ones out of bits and pieces of reactive philosophy from Marx to Te-nehisi Coates.
For a Conservative, that tendency to preserve healthy institutions should best also contain a willingness to consider occasionally just how healthy they really are, for all. For the Leftist, the tendency to tear down the past seems to rest on a flawed assumption that the next step, no matter what it is, will certainly be better than the previous one, and history of revolutions shows that rarely to be the case.
Conservatism without Nationalism is like Faith without works.
Neoconservatives purged all America First from the Republican party starting in 1988.
Trump was a paleoconservative...nearly by the book.
So, when discussing “conservative”, distinction between paleo and neo is essential.
Less or more government.
Good points. A conservative will respect history and learn from it. No so the Leftist.
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