We have some commonly used terms that we commonly throw around that I'm not entirely sure are commonly understood. In both politics and religion, there are both conservatives and liberals. Now, conservatives we understand (we think). They're the narrow-minded, stodgy, self-centered types that aren't willing to move forward and aren't willing to surrender their power base. Well, of course, that may be the perspective (it is, in fact, what the junior high school teacher told my son), but it's not in the least a fair or accurate representation. There may be, in fact are, people like that, but that isn't how "conservative" is defined.
No, "conservative" literally refers to those who ... wish to conserve. (Yeah, who thinks of this stuff?) That is, they want to retain the current value systems, maintain the status quo, perhaps even return to an earlier one. It's not, by definition, about self-centeredness or keeping power. It's the idea that the current (or previous) system is more valued than a new one. It's the notion that change is not necessarily better than "not change". The motivations for this particular perspective vary, to be sure, but it's this value system that defines "conservative". The "liberal" is, therefore, the opposite. The "liberal" wants to move on, to change things. Liberals don't want to leave things as they are; they want ... change.
Interesting factoid. Conservatives don't mind being called "conservatives". They typically self-identify as such. Liberals, on the other hand, hate being called "liberals". While the word "conservative" often calls to mind "stodgy, selfish, narrow-minded" and "liberal" calls to mind "generous, open-minded", conservatives typically like their moniker, but liberals abhor theirs. So what do they prefer? "Progressive." Ah, there's the ticket!
What, exactly, is "progressive"? Well, the term refers to the idea of continual improvement. The concept is one of making things better. That, of course, is somewhat misleading when it comes to "conservative" versus "liberal" because the conservative notion is that by moving back we can make things better -- progress. The idea there is that by returning to what works, things will get better. "Progressive", then, can be misleading on its own.
And therein lies the problem, at least for me. Today's progressives have in mind the idea of "progress", of moving forward to make things better, as if movement alone is good. However, from what I can see, "better" is undefined. Oh, there are general concepts. "Help the poor" or "assist the homeless" or "decrease crime" are all "better" -- no one disagrees with that. But the progressive mindset is that the way to do it is to move away from what we are doing to something new, and the conservative mindset is to do what we are doing better. That is, it is a misunderstanding (at best -- a lie at worst) to suggest that conservatives don't want to help the poor, assist the homeless, decrease crime, that sort of thing. We all agree those are good. We disagree on how to do those things.
What has happened in our day is that "better" has become irrelevant. Partly that's because of relativism. "Better for you is not necessarily better for me." Partly it is because of the current mood that eliminates Christianity from the public square. (Christianity, you see, offers a definite definition of "better".) Partly it is a response to discontent with current conditions. President Obama ran on the concept of "change", but I (and most people I know) never quite knew what that "change" entailed. I mean, moving from a republic to a monarchy is "change", but is it better? (No, I'm not suggesting Mr. Obama has intended any such thing. I'm just making a point.) Today's progressives, it seems, don't have an actual concept of "better". The concept is more of "change". And while change is the definition of "progressive", it isn't necessarily good without a goal in sight.
I suppose the problem is that so many people today don't think this stuff through. They react without analyzing. "I don't like the way things are," someone might rightly say, "so I want change. Progressives are offering change. We're in agreement." And we see the looming backlash from that in the upcoming elections. It turns out that "change" isn't exactly what was needed. "Change" isn't providing the answers. But today's world argues that we should be most concerned with "wear the rubber meets the road" and ignore all that theoretical stuff. You know, "it's possible to be too heavenly minded to be any earthly good." That kind of thing. So we don't think about what "progress" or "change" actually means and we scurry about trying to get ... someplace we haven't actually thought about or defined. That doesn't seem to be working too well for either conservative or liberal -- or progressive.
2 comments:
I just wish the Progressives wanted change with respect to the status quo of abortion on demand (~4,000 human beings killed per day), postmodernism, reckless spending, and more. But they don't want that kind of progress, of course. They want Liberalism.
This post reminds me of the words of F. A. Hayek in The Road To Serfdom:
"The [conservative} argument is in favor of making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts, not an argument for leaving things just the as they are."
The bracketed word "conservative" I translated from liberal. This book was written before liberalism was co-opted and changed to what it is today, and as far as I can tell from Hayek's writings, before the word conservative, at least in its present meaning, had been coined. But for sure there can be no confusion as to Hayek's take on socialism, which is a word interchangeable today with liberalism and progressivism, both of which Hayek decried as the "road" in the book's namesake.
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