How would you define the main difference between liberal and conservative?
I don’t mean the extremes. Only the actual standard liberal and conservative.
Define the Difference
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
How would you define the main difference between liberal and conservative?
I don’t mean the extremes. Only the actual standard liberal and conservative.
Clarissa's Blog 
Conservative: Wants everybody to abide by the same rules, and a culture and economy that allow for human flourishing in the traditional ways: safe neighborhoods, normal people with normal jobs can support a family, functional community life. Novel things are treated with suspicion until time proves them harmless.
Liberal: Wants to keep options open at all times, be an early-adopter of everything new, perpetually chasing novelty. Every new technology, drug, medical treatment, device, method, management theory, religion, economic theory, political philosophy, hot neighborhood, booming job market, and consumer pseudo-religion is automatically good until it gets stale and something else comes along.
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This is very good, thank you.
.
Also, a liberal believes that an individual’s freedom to pursue any course of action should trump the interests of the community. And a conservative believes that tradition and customs of the community should limit individual freedom.
Right?
This is for my course that starts on Monday.
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Yeah, basically.
But that’s covered under “same rules for everybody” and “safe neighborhoods”.
Conflicts look like:
Somebody burglarizes a house:
Conservative: that person should go to jail for the legally-appointed length of time, both because it keeps the neighborhood safe to have him off the streets, and because we have rules about burglarizing houses. Anybody who burglarizes a house must serve the time for it.
Liberal: Well, it depends on his mental state, his economic background, his ethnicity. If he was raised by feral penguins and didn’t know any better, and is crazy because he’s on drugs, then we shouldn’t *ruin his whole future.* Everybody, even criminals, needs to have their options perpetually open. How do we know he will burglarize more houses or commit more crime, unless we give him the chance? The worst thing you can do to people is *take away their choices*.
There’s some gray area with stuff like drugs, that serves to illuminate the different flavors of conservatism, and further define the left/right divide: the more traditional conservatives tend to just be against recreational drugs: hard drugs should be illegal, basically because they are bad for the community. Your freedom to get high should be curtailed by the interests of the larger community. The more libertarian end of things says: you should be free to do all the drugs you want, as long as you pay for them with your own money and when you fry your brain you do not become a drain on public resources. You are free to do stupid things, and everybody else is free to let you suffer the natural consequences of doing stupid things: nobody should be taxed in order to scrape your sorry carcass off the roadside and provide you with medical care after you OD. Meanwhile, the liberal take on drugs seems to be: drugs are fine, and we should all pay for the care, housing, and feeding of people who abuse them.
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“the main difference between liberal and conservative?”
For myself I tend to think of time orientation:
conservative – tend to look back and idealize the past (even when they were there and knew how bad some problems were) and they tend to be wary of the future which is seen as threatening. Their systemic metaphor is Paradise Lost and each new days takes them further away from that.
liberals – look to and idealize the future (while demonizing and wanting to escape/deny the past) but their hopes for the future are usually unobtainable. Their systemic metaphor is the City on the Hill which seems to briefly come into sight only to reveal itself as far away as ever.
in short – conservatives want to recreate a past that never existed and liberals want a future than can never happen
the difference between the extremes and the middle are how often and strongly they think about and feel their temporal dislocation.
Since I have no shame, I’ll position myself as the wise option in the middle – neither sugar coating nor demonizing the past and ready for the future (with varying amounts of hope and dread depending on lots of other factors).
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One of the very few times when I’ve found cliff’s answer disappointing. What a pity, since I have a very high opinion of him.
I don’t think conservatives idealise the past, though it’s true that they may idolise it. Conservatives instinctively pivot around the idea of tradition, not of the past. Traditions are invented and reinvented all the time: they serve to link the present with the past AND the future, which is why conservative values are rooted in family and communities. It’s linking generations through an infinite chain of being, which creates transcendent meaning for the individual. The individual is one of the links in that chain of being, and this is what gives meaning to the individual and to the chain. The individual enjoys limited freedom and certainly not absolute self-determination as this would put the integrity of the eternal chain of being at risk of breaking. Meaning and value are created by the individual within the community, not by the individual alone, in the same way that a link alone cannot create a chain. Since, by definition, individuals who value family and community flourish in those settings, it’s easier to find self-contented people among conservatives. Also, more psychotic people, i.e. people who are unable to reach a balance between individual and communal living.
Liberals focus on individualistic values, idolising the idea of freedom above everything else. They do not care for roots and traditions, and are impelled by performative empathy as the basis of their emotions. It’s stressing the here and now of the Self as the absolute master of its destiny, regardless of anything or anyone else that may shackle that Self in any way possible: present, past or future. Meaning for these people is constantly being created and recreated because it serves to make sense of the here and now. Since the here and now constantly changes, meaning for liberals is not stable and is of no value if it does not help to justify the Self’s need to determine its freedom, no matter the cost involved. Since, by definition, an individual is ultimately alone and does not depend on others to create valid meaning for itself, it’s easier to find unhappy or neurotic people among liberals.
The fight, however, is not that of conservatives vs liberals: it’s the ongoing struggle of radicals against non-radicals. Margaret Thatcher was a Radical, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro were radicals. Ronald Reagan was a Radical. It’s these people who create revolutions and it’s these people who are a danger to both sane conservatives and sane liberals.
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“since I have a very high opinion of him”
You need to rethink some things….
Anyhoo, there is a difference in the relationship between the individual and the groups they live within…. but it’s not so easy to capture. Both conservatives and liberals are willing to sacrifice the happiness of the individual for the group and both can accept the individual flipping off the group to go their own way.
“conservative values are rooted in family and communities”
“Liberals focus on individualistic values, idolising the idea of freedom above everything”
The thing is I remember not so very long ago when that was flipped, conservatives were rugged individualists and liberals were all about the importance of community.
I’ve looked for other parameters and the one I keep coming back to is past vs future.
“Make America Great Again” – the past is the template for a good future
vs
“What can be, unburdened by what has been” – the past as a burden to be shaken off so the future can be better
Ultimately I think a well-integrated individual needs both liberal and conservative values, held in some kind of balance and I shy away from definitions that aggrandize one at the expense of the other. My ideas are also shaped by my experience as an American who has… in important ways…. turned my back on my national ‘community’ and who does not regret it.
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20-30 years.
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Largely true, but some seem determined to never learn ;-D
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10 years ago, I’d have agreed. But right now, the most liberal people I know are older, and the most enthusiastically conservative are younger than I am.
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True, the blue collar guys, and especially the GenZ’s, have had enough…and another twenty million dollar pile of fresh road muffins are not going to get men back in the Democrat herd ;-D
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