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