Re: Right and left liberal and conservative

From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed May 14 2003 - 13:51:27 MDT

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    > (Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>):
    >
    > > This right-left liberal- conservative thing has always confused me,
    > > conservatives are supposed to be in favor of Low taxes and preventing
    > > women from having abortions but what does one have to do with the
    > > other? It's the same with wanting rigid anti drug laws and school
    > > vouchers too, I just don't see why it has to be a package deal.
    >
    > It is about underlying ideology, something which quite a few politicians
    > and citizens forget these days but which actually has rather profound
    > controlling effects on ideas. Conservatism is in the abstract about
    > conserving existing institutions against change, liberalism (American
    > sense, social democracy in Europe) is based on the idea of using the
    > government to create equality, and so on. These core ideas can be quite
    > complex structures (look at Marxism), and often ally with ideas and
    > groups with similar interests. Then political reality intrudes and
    > people start making compromises, deals and promises to maximize votes,
    > and the ideology part gets very diluted and hidden. But it exists deep
    > down and should not be ignored. One can reach the conclusion "school
    > vouchers are good" from both a conservative and a libertarian position,
    > but that doesn't mean they are identical or should always cooperate.

    The rhetoric may be about ideology, but the realities of politics are
    about constituency. People /say/ they want politicians to do the right
    thing; but /vote/ for politicians that are "on their side", and they
    often don't see the difference.

    Sure, you can support school vouchers from either a conservative or
    liberal ideology, but if your liberal party gets lots of contributions
    from teachers unions scared to death that they might have to work for a
    living, you're going to oppose vouchers, and make up some liberal-
    sounding excuse like "the poor will be badly educated". Almost any
    position can be supported by an argument from either ideology: the
    trick is to get the largest number of people to give you money by
    giving them what they want while /appearing/ to be ideologically
    motivated, because people perceive ideological motivations as more
    reliable than expedient ones, even if they're fake.

    -- 
    Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
    "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
    are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
    for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
    


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