“Liberals tend to believe in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s proposition that human nature is intrinsically good. Conservatives know better. They recognize that there are two principles in human nature – good and evil – and these are in constant conflict.”
That’s a simplistic and uninformed view of Rousseau, wrong on liberals believing it. And wrong about conservatives as well.
In fact, it is conservatives that think that man is ‘basically’ good and can turn evil by making wrong decisions and not taking responsibility for them. They think the market works because people operating with their own self-interest in mind, works well for the seller, buyer and ‘by invisible hand’ - society.
The primary differentiating characteristic of a liberal is not that they think that human nature is intrinsically good; it’s that they think that THEY know what’s good for others. Not only that, they think they can change the self-interested individual into a ‘collectively-interested’ individual - at first they encourage voluntarism with efforts for the ‘general good’ and then use incentives and finallly when that doesn’t work (when they find out they CAN’T change the nature of man) - they do so with force.
A more proper difference is that liberals use force and violence to get what they want and conservatives/libertarians use consent.
Well said.