I'm SICK of people misusing the terms "liberal" and "conservative" to suit their side of particular political disputes. Having stumbled upon this article, I remain disturbed and bewildered by the Church of Liberalism and its Inquisition.
As far as I am concerned, we should, for illustrative purposes, strip the terms of the political implications the masses of ignorant opinion-spewing dunderheads have tattooed onto them.
Conservative (from the Latin, conservare, meaning to keep together, to guard) means resistant to change, concerned with keeping tradition. Are there elements of civilization which have changed to a sufficient level and cannot improve with further progress and reform?
Answering yes to this question means you have a conservative opinion. You are NOT a conservative. Avoid defining yourself based on your opinions. They will be wrong most of the time, whether because you are ignorant (or have incomplete information), or because new information is discovered or developed and the issue changes.
Liberal (from the Latin, liber, meaning free) means favoring freedom. By a common leap in logic that everyone seems to now ignore, liberal now is used to mean following liberalism which extends the valuation of freedom to attempts to solve societal problems or disputes. You cannot be a liberal. If you think you are a liberal, you are a liberalist. Analogously, I am not a skeptical, I am a skeptic.
Is the pinnacle of human civilization to be achieved by allowing each person freedom to choose in any given situation? Let's assume that the pinnacle of human civilization is the ultimate realization of human potential and it is a good thing for everyone; it is per se the aggregate meaning of life. Then the question becomes: are humans good enough at choosing to achieve this goal of humanity if each individual is given free choice? Some trivialize this question by mistranslating it into a question of whether human nature is good or evil, embodied in countless creation myths, codices of religious dogma, jurisprudential treatises, and the like. As I see it, the question is whether people are capable of realizing their potential.
This question redefines the divide between those with a liberal value system and those who can be content with the status quo in certain realms, i.e. liberal and conservative thinkers.
As for those who identify themselves by an adjective that may or may not describe the majority of their opinions, watching these people villainize each other infuriates me, but I suppose it serves them right to be caught in such a futile debate. Instead of realizing and exploring the fundamental difference in their perspectives, they label and mudsling and muckrake. "Conservatives hate science. Liberals are dirty hippies. Blah blah yadda yadda."
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It is pretty funny and pretty stupid that we've become this way. I think it's partly b/c we've become more like sheep than ever before. So called conservatives in government have been the biggest government spenders and have changed the laws of the land more than anyone. Thus, they're not conservative at all and so called liberals have a tendency to not be very progressive and locally focused at all. Blah blah blah, it's all quite maddening. You're right, people should focus on developing their world view rather than figuring out which vague, inappropriately labeled category they fall into. (This is Josh Pond, btw, not der fanatiker).
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