Re: "liberal media"

From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed May 14 2003 - 09:04:42 MDT

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    Harvey Newstrom wrote:

    > ...
    >
    >What's the problem? Haven't you people ever looked these terms up in the
    >dictionary before? Sheesh!
    >...
    >--
    >Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, IAM, GSEC, IBMCP
    ><www.HarveyNewstrom.com> <www.Newstaff.com>
    >
    A dictionary represents an approximation of how one group of people used
    words, or thought words should be used, at one particular time. They
    are very useful for looking up words like "tholepin" or "wildebeest",
    but much less useful for looking up works like "constructive" or
    "liberal". Live words won't have exactly the same meaning that the
    dictionary lists...or at best, the chances of this are minor. The OED
    handles this by listing references where particular usages can be
    located (I'd need to invent an example, as my copy is at home). This
    isn't perfect, but at least it gives you some handle on when the
    definition was (became?) current. A
    "most recent significant" reference as well as an "oldest" reference
    would improve the utility.

    That said, I tend to consider myself conservative. I know that most
    people tend to consider that I am either liberal or radical, or just
    silly, but that doesn't change my opinion of myself. And I also tend to
    consider the radical authoritarian centralists to be an exact opposite
    of conservative. We have never before gone in for theocracies or
    dictatorships, so to do so can't, in my view, be considered conservative
    by any reasonable stretch. And I get quite confused by those who
    consider that liberal and conservative are opposites. Social concern
    for the poor has existed longer than the US has existed. Approaches to
    handling it have differed, but the concern has been a constant (even if
    it's only been to grubstake someone to get them out of town). So in
    this context "liberal" would just mean favoring more social concern
    rather than less, and conservative would mean holding onto the forms of
    concern that are traditional. (This doesn't work... I think of myself
    as conservative, but not as a blockhead. The traditional approaches
    have depended on having intact communities, and those have been
    systematically destroyed over the last century and a half...since, in
    fact, the emergence of large-scale employers like the railroads. In the
    1950's people worried about "The Organization Man" as a new
    phenomenon...he wasn't new, the environment had just become so altered
    that he was being preferred. It's become so accepted that people no
    longer notice, but that was a sign that communities were nearly dead.)



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