A recent post over at Zerays gazette John was talking about principles to live by. In the course of discussion debate arose over weather working for causes was worth while. I think this is really a defining issue separating liberal from conservative.
Liberals and conservatives look at causes differently. A liberal is much more likely to campaign to save the polar bears, or the planet or for any of a myriad of projects. Conservatives tend to see the world as being pretty good, and would like the status quo to continue. I know these are generalizations but look at this summer. People were talking about how angry and disruptive the conservative protesters were at townhall meetings. This was just people not thinking things out. The real reason people were talking about this is that it was so out of the norm. People are not used to conservatives protesting. However this was different than the normal liberal protest in that the protests were to prevent change not implement it.
I believe in a slower change one where people effect people one on one. Coaching youth sports, teaching Sunday school, etc. any where there is interaction between people we are changing the world.
How are you going to change the world?
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"However this was different than the normal liberal protest in that the protests were to prevent change not implement it."
ReplyDeleteI guess I would view most "liberal" protests as also tryin got "prevent change." Looking at the examples that you yourself used, these strike me as pretty "conservative." Environmentalists want slow, cautious change, rather than swift decision making that will wipe out ecosystems and drive species to extinction. The people who were protesting before we invaded Iraq were looking for less radical solutions to the stalemate than dropping millions of pounds of explosives on a country and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings.
So I totally disagree that conservatives are out there trying to slow down rapid change, and that liberals are out there being hasty.
I think it's also not very true that conservatives don't also have a long history of public protest. The people boycotting the funerals of gay firefighters were generally not liberals, the people trying to stop the integration of schools in the south were not hippies. And the almost daily picket lines, rallies and such around Planned Parenthood clinics and other abortion providers defy the notion that conservatives generally don't take the streets.
Jockeystreet not wanting to change the ecosystems at the price of changing human behaviour is still fighting for change. It's the price of supposedly saving the ecosystems that bothers conservatives. If in saving the ecosystems we destroy the economy what have we saved.
ReplyDeleteI suppose you are right that both sides protest I guess you are more likely to hear the voices that grate against you views.
Environmentalists want slow, cautious change, rather than swift decision making that will wipe out ecosystems and drive species to extinction.
ReplyDeleteA few months ago, I read Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies. She pointed out that many elements in the environmental movement are actually quite conservative, if not reactionary, in that they see technological and economic progress as bad.
In some ways, the embrace-change/fear-change dynamic is a more useful paradigm for understanding human decision-making than liberal/conservative.