Liberal vs. Conservative (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, October 12, 2009, 10:40 (5313 days ago) @ David Turell

The website to which David drew our attention: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/swimming_upstream_the_life_of.html
&... the absurd anomaly of liberalism as extremism, with people falling so far backward in order to make up for past intolerance that now they've become intolerant towards the very values that made them liberal in the first place. I guess a pendulum has to keep swinging. I don't think it's any different in this country. There was an air hostess who lost her job for wearing a cross round her neck. We are fierce defenders of minority rights. For instance, after kids set fire to the trees at the bottom of our garden, we erected a fence with a string of barbed wire at the top. If a trespasser ... let's say a would-be burglar ... were to injure himself climbing our fence, he could sue us.
 
But there's as much conservatism as liberalism. A subversive shift is taking place in our educational system, to which our attention was drawn in August 2008 (under Intelligent Design) by "rightarmover" ... a primary schoolteacher. In particular he mentioned so-called Academies, which replace ordinary schools and are frequently funded by religious bodies whose last concern is to foster tolerance. Faith schools by their very nature are conservative and divisive.-The fact of the matter is that there's a streak of intolerance in most groups that share a belief or a set of values. You can't believe something unless you reckon you're right, and that automatically means you reckon others are wrong. It then becomes a question of degree. I would like to think the vast majority of people are moderate ... prepared to live and let live ... but there's a minority of, for instance, atheists who will shout down theists, and theists who will shout down atheists (not to mention theists who will blow up anybody in order to get to Paradise). Liberal, conservative, socialist, Christian, Muslim. Jew, Hindu, tribalist, football supporter ... each one can be extended to extremism, and each extreme engenders intolerance and conflict. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ally yourself to a group, but every group should have a healthy enough proportion of internal scepticism to respect the rights of others. Here endeth the moderate, tolerant, open-minded agnostic's lesson.