Liberal vs Conservative

I’ve written before about how neither political party can fairly lay claim to the label they choose for themselves (liberal and conservative). Both have become mired in special and self interests to the detriment of their philosophies, constituencies and responsibilities.

My wife and I were having a discussion on what it really means to be liberal and what it really means to be conservative, and I think we’ve got a pretty good handle on it, and it reinforces my opinion that the best place to be is in the center.

In a nutshell, conservative thinking respects the status quo. Liberal thinking is actually better represented by the new term they take for themselves “progressive”, looking to change things for the better.

The thing is, by definition, true conservative opinion is going to be much less contentious than liberal thinking, because if you are conservative on an issue, that’s it. The only area of contention is whether you are conservative based on the current status quo, or conservative in thinking the old way was better and wanting to go back to that.

Contrast that with liberal thinking which, by advocating change, opens up the debate over which change is actually “for the better”. But certainly most of the things we take for granted these days came about because of liberal thinking, not conservative. Abolishing slavery was a very liberal idea in its time. Voting rights for women and minorities as well. Equal protection and rights clauses too.

Heck, the very notions on which this country was founded were liberal in their day: democracy, personal liberties, fair representation. These were all changes from the status quo, liberal ideas decried strongly by conservative British citizens.

Not all change is for the better, of course. Throwing more money at a corrupt and broken welfare system may feel on the surface like “giving more to the poor”, but it doesn’t make things any better.

And this is why I have a hard time respecting anyone who asserts that they are conservative to the exclusion of all things liberal, or liberal without a trace of conservative thinking. Without liberal thought, life remains static, boring, and nothing ever changes. Without conservative thought, life is constantly in flux and there’s no stability.

We need both respect for tradition and an activist nature to prevent us from stagnating.

Liam.