I was having a discussion with a friend about the sharp demarcation of conservatives and liberals in the US polity and whether there is a single underlying quality that defines each section. For example, conservatives in the US prefer small govt, but would support a big army, support free markets, but want restricted sexual lives, etc. Interestingly, albeit anti-climatically, he summed up the underlying difference in one word – conservativeness<\/i>.
\n
\nI confess I had earlier just thought that the words conservatives and liberals had stuck on due to the corresponding views of the two sections on sexual mores. But apparently, even on other fronts – economic and otherwise – “conservativeness” defines the two camps’ views adequately. And even on the sexual mores and traditions front, the “conservativeness” ran deeper.
\nApparently it’s all about a conservative attitude towards the fallibility of humans<\/b>.<\/p>\n
Consider “free-marketism” or even “libertarianism”. Why is this “conservative”?
\nI had in fact touched upon this in some previous posts where I argued that libertarianism seemed a bit “lazy”. “Laissez Faire” itself means non-interference.
\nIf you’re conservative about trusting fallible humans to don the mantle of competent central planners, you’d obviously prefer a more distributed approach in
\neconomics.<\/p>\n
Consider patriotism and big armies. Here again, if you are “conservative” in the above sense, and have suspicions of any infallible virtuosity in humans, you’d want an extensive security force, and also rally together as a group, nation, etc.<\/p>\n
And on the sexual mores and traditions front it is the same conservative attitude towards the fallibility of humans that makes them want to conserve traditional values. Apparently, the development of traditions and mores over the ages is a time-tested distributed way of developing a social contract as opposed to say dictats from legislators and intellectuals. Which explains the general disdain of conservatives towards intellectuals particularly of the humanities kind.<\/p>\n
So, basically the underlying difference is the way they view humanity – with conservatives being hard-nosed and cynical and liberals being starry-eyed optimists. Well, I guess that makes me a conservative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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