BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition

Subject: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 11:27 AM

From Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself"

I like it. Any comments?

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: GUEST,GI Joe
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 11:50 AM

If when you are young and not a liberal then you have no heart.
If when you are old and not a conservative then you have no brains.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Terry McDonald
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 12:09 PM

Tories and Radicals make history, Liberals write it.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 12:20 PM

Churchill was wrong about that. He was an opinionated old bugger who was often wrong, although he was very witty and good at delivering memorable statements.

He was wrong about Gallipoli too.

He was furthermore wrong in sending the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse to Singapore to cow the Japanese Navy. The Japanese sank them both quite easily and only lost about 5 inexpensive airplanes doing it.

He was furthermore wrong in assuming that an attack on Italy, the "soft underbelly of Europe", as he put it, would be a cakewalk. It turned out to be a bitterly tough campaign.

The reason most people become instinctively more conservative as they get older is not because they have brains, it is because change frightens them, and they find society changing rapidly all around them. They feel more much comfortable with the old familiar values that connect back with their younger years when they were in their prime. This is not the reaction of intelligence so much as it is the reaction of ingrained habit and the reluctance to deal with innovation.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Severn
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 12:24 PM

Nice view. I like it too.

Then, of course, there's Phil Och's "Love Me, I'm A Liberal" to keep us honest.

Maybe a slightly cynical view is that a Republican politician would sell you their mother and admit it proudly.

A Democrat would sell her, as well, but when mothers start getting scarce, they would at least sense their endangerment and set up organizations try to raise money preserve what's left, hopefully before it's too late. If the mother mother population bounces back, they'll start selling them again and go find something else they've helped deplete in their time that's endangered to hold rallys to save. Thus Democrats at least like to preserve traditions and the more liberal they are, the more they like to do so.

Republicans, for the most part, ignore tradition and will unwittingly preserve it by doing such unless they find a way to pave over it and make a profit. You might get them to pitch in to save an endangered Battlefield, if you're lucky. Or anything threatening their OWN neighborhood. But if they can eradicate something, they usually will.

When a conservative holds a yard sale and get rid of, say, their old LPs, you won't find much traditional or folk recordings beyond hymns (and homemade records of Gospel groups might be a dime for two dozen.) or the odd Honky Tonk or Bluegrass that some might hold onto to the end if you're lucky, even though a very great number of the "Folk" themselves vote Republican. And even if they themselves are Conservatives, their own homemade music and crafts will find more buyers among the Liberals.

That stirs up another dreaded "What is Folk?" question. If it is what they were raised on and maybe what they still treasure in CD form, are Ray Conniff and Percy Faith, functioning as folk music to them? Is John Phillip Sousa their Woody Guthrie?

And if Liberals are more likely to save traditions or environment and the like than those on but not nescessarily in the Right, then just what is it that a Conservative actually conserves?

So therefore, I tend to vote mostly Democratic (though Maryland HAS been blessed in the past with some fine Republicans the calibre of Mac Mathias and Connie Morella), as they are more likely to help preserve old ways that I feel very Conservative to still believe in.

"Splain it to me, Kingfish......."

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 12:32 PM

In reviewing Lipmann's book Littrell summarizes my thoughts very well. I don't quite agree that *the* reason that youth are liberal is that they have less to lose, as the writer implies because I think that youth, being less jaded and disillusioned, is more idealistic and eager to make things better.

(However, I just realized that my own experience does not bear out Littrell's thesis- I am more radically liberal today than I was when I was 20.)

Littrell says: "Professor Lipsman gets his title from this statement (variously attributed to Disraeli, Churchill, Mark Twain, François Guizot, Clemenceau, et al.): "If you are young and are not liberal, then you have no heart; but if you are old and are not conservative, then you have no brain."

"There can be little doubt that the older we get the more conservative we tend to be. However, this change does not take place because we are wiser. Instead it comes about because in general we have more to conserve, and most importantly because what we really need to conserve is the way of life to which we have grown accustomed. After having spent several decades acclimating ourselves to a particular way of life, with familiar values and recognizable patterns and behaviors, it is very difficult to embrace change.

"Young people tend to be more liberal not because of their hearts, but because they usually have less to conserve and have not become so accustomed to a particular way of life that they fear change. Indeed they often prefer change because most of the power and goodies of the society belong to older people. That is what the quotation really means.


Conservatism versus Liberalism

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 12:34 PM

To define the words properly, you have to determine in which society and at what time.

For instance, an American conservative would have had a particular hatred for Soviet hardliners during the Cold War. The same would have been true of a Russian liberal during the same period, whereas a Russian conservative would have been the Soviet hardliner. ;-)

Wars are instigated and fought enthusiastically by the arch-conservatives on either side of the conflict. They are very loyal to military tradition and they rely on it heavily, while the liberals on both sides of a war are somewhat less inclined to do that...and more inclined to question whether a war is the best way of dealing with the situation.

Conservatives, in other words, are born to go out and kill other conservatives, while liberals are born to write books and songs and make movies which exhaustively analyze the futility of war. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 12:35 PM

Good stuff, Ebbie.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 02:53 PM

If when you are old and not a conservative then you have no brains.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

either I am not old enuf yet, or Sir Winnie was TOO old when he said that.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 03:13 PM

That being said, I do know that as one grows older, one presumably has more experience to draw on, and....if one evaluates and applies those experiences with care, one 'may' come to a more mixed view of some issues instead of just rubber-stamping cookie-cutter ideas (there's a mixed metaphor for you!).

I find I have 'some' opinions which are similar to various conservative opinions...but seldom for the same reasons!...so I try to be careful about how I state them.

[one example: I do not flatly reject the death penalty for various crimes - though my reasons usually differ from those who clamor for lots of executions.]

I am resisting the urge to type out a long, tedious screed on the subject, as I need to edit it 27 times to be sure I say what I mean.

But one clear..(to me).. difference between Ls & Cs is how my life would be different if conservatives (read:Republicans) had their way, compared to how THEIR life would be different under liberals (read: Democrats).

Democrats 'tend' to want you to think their way....Conservatives 'tend' to want you to behave their way, no matter HOW you think....the implications bother me a lot.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 03:25 PM

I posted the definition primarily because it's one of the few I've encountered that wasn't based on a value judgment. Or a Party preference.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: pdq
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 04:01 PM

"Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself"

Sounds like a quote you could expect from a liberal politician.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: GUEST,G.I. Joe
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 04:04 PM

No matter how liberal you are. you WILL grow old Then what????

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: kendall
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 05:16 PM

Conservative mantra: "Pull up the ladder...I'M aboard".

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 06:50 PM

Referring back to the Moynihan quote, I think both liberals and conservatives believe they are trying to "save us from ourselves".

Where they heartily disagree is on exactly what parts of ourselves we need to be saved from.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 06:57 PM

My gracious, B-dub...the images that conjures!

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 07:24 PM

What I'm getting from all this is the distinct impression that the basic difference between the US brand of liberals and conservatives is as follows:-

An American conservative firmly believes that the way foward is to stand still.
An American liberal firmly believes that the way forward is to go back.


'Scuse me, but who do you have that believes the way forward is to advance? I'D VOTE FOR HIM, if I were you.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Amos
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 07:29 PM

Beedub. what a perspicacious and pithy proposition!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 10:32 PM

Bee-Dub--
No, I think they're both trying to save us from the other guy.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 04:24 AM

I have to say that of the two statements that The Honorable DPM makes, I would be more inclined to think that the first was likely to be demonstrably true, depending on how you differentiate culture from politics--whereas the second seems to be a cross between a tautology and an oxymoron--and I'm generally considered a "Liberal"--

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 06:59 PM

Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center.   - Jon Stewart

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Peter T.
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 07:10 PM

There are hardly any conservatives in the West outside of a few fringies, native people and environmentalists. Everyone else is a neo-liberal, either gung-ho for the market, or slightly concerned about the market.   I think I have met about 5 real conservatives in my life.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: pdq
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 07:15 PM

"Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning...I represent the distracted center."  ~ Jon Stewart

Yep, on the body politic Jon Stewart can be found centered and a little to the south.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 09:41 PM

Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: pdq
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 10:12 PM

A fiscal liberal is somebody who spends more money than he makes and still says "it will work out just fine. Trust me".

A fiscal conservative is somebody who still saves Green Stamps.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 11:55 PM

Guest, G.I. Joe, you said - "No matter how liberal you are. you WILL grow old Then what????"

Ahem! Then you die. ;-) This is also true of conservatives.

pdq, a fiscal neoconservative is someone who encourages everyone in the whole society to spend ten times more money than they really make, encourages banks to lend out 1,000 times more money than there really is, and says, "This will stimulate the economy. It'll work out fine. Trust me." ;-D

A fiscal liberal sort of does that too...just not quite as aggressively.

The whole North American system is based on people irresponsibly spending far more money than they are making and buying now what they probably can't afford to pay for later. It is, in fact, a gigantic pyramid scheme, a bubble of hot air. It is a house built upon sand.

I could say the same of American foreign policy, only I think it's even worse than that.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 04:36 AM

A Fiscal Liberal in the mold of FDR. Uses deficit spending to stimulate the economy in bad time in the hope that it will turn around.

A Fiscal Conservative like Herbert Hoover will decrease spending in hard times thus making hard times worse.

As far as I can see, there have been no Fiscal conservatives since Hoover.

Though Clinton at least produced a surplus, which the Republican Congress immediately tried to spend on earmarks, programs and tax cuts. Had Bush tried to cut the debt, he might have been able to call himself conservative.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: beardedbruce
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 04:53 AM

A conservative is someone who will pay his own money tp get you to do what he wants you to do.

A liberal is someone who will pay with other people's money to get you to do what he ants you to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Liberal/Conservative Definition
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 05:19 AM

Nope

A conservative is someone who gives a little bit of money to politicians to get them to give my tax money to corporations.
a liberal gives my tax money directly to poor people.