RE: Right and left liberal and conservative

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 20:23:24 MDT

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    Harvey composes a list of items for which "Liberals want
    more diversity and options available to everybody, while
    Conservatives want to maintain the status quo", and
    Damien rightly points out that item number 4, vouchers

    > Well, vouchers could be seen as giving families more
    > choice and options as to what schools to go to.

    Indeed, I only agree that about half of the list of
    items can be seen as changing *away* from the status quo:

    1. Abortion: new option that gives freedom to women

    Yes, but since 1973, any new option would be to let
    states individually determine their own laws, thus
    moving freedom down one level from federal to state
    (not that I'm against ultimately moving it all the
    way down to individuals!)

    2. Taxes: new funding for new programs

    Conservatives are often plenty in favor of new programs,
    so long as they boost the military, or, more ominously,
    diminish social freedoms, such as drug laws, laws
    against sodomy, etc.

    3. Drugs: new modes of consciousness and new thoughts

    Yes. Liberals are indeed almost as much in favor of abolishing
    laws against drug use as libertarians tend to be.

    4. Vouchers: a way to get kids away from new ideas (like sex education and
                    evolution) and back into traditional-family-faith-based schools

    Damien refuted this.

    5. Pornography: new modes of sexuality besides the heterosexual missionary
                    position within a traditional family unit

    Yes. Liberals favor freedom on this one too (in general, liberals
    go for social freedoms, except for freedom of association, and the
    freedom to discriminate).

    6. Welfare: new opportunities for poverty-stricken minorities, might change
                    the balance of power

    The conservatives will say that they want to free people from
    dependency on government handouts. There is no little truth
    to this: when I was 29, all it would have taken---if only the
    government had known!---would have been a measly $15 per day,
    peanuts! and I would have never gone back to school and into
    computer programming, and would be a welfare recipient to this
    day.

    7. Environmental Laws: new restrictions based on the idea that the environment
                    is being changed

    Hmm? But liberals *like* the laws to prevent environmental change,
    and so keep the status quo. Conservatives are much more in favor
    of economic development (i.e., change).

    8. Military: keep new immigrants out and new ideas out to keep America
                    unchanged

    No ;-) liberals want other nations to remain as they are, and not
    be forced to be civilized by a petulant and irascible U.S. Here,
    it's the conservatives who are all for change!

    (Yes, it is ironic: the conservatives want *them* to change,
    and the liberals want *us* to change!)

    Lee



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