I would personally find it a stretch to create a manifesto of what liberal's think. I consider myself socially liberal and economicly centrist. I'm not a member of an organized party, I'm a Democrat! There is however a concept which I think you completely miss in your conservative credo.
The Commons.
It is all too easy to insist that what I think is correct, or what I like is better than what I don't, or that what I own is mine all mine. These are easy because they are fundamentally correct. We know only what we know as individuals, we can only control that which we feel we own. We are all individuals, just like everyone else!
We don't live in a separate reality even though each of us lives in our own mind. This is a community, in a country which is part of a civilization. Our sucess as humans is closely tied with out ability to live in groups. Humans are a social species. Any sucessful attempt at culture must recognize the group as well as the individual. The conservative too often takes the one God, one culture, one unity approach to creating a culture, a mightly fortress monolith of a unified culture, in theory.
The reality of the world, and country, and neighborhood is that of the commons. This is the sidewalk we must all traverse. This is the air we must continue to breath at the same time. This is art, music, literature, Tv, and internet that we must find coming from our shared providers. There is much that we must make use of after someone else has, and leave for someone else entirely to use after us.
The sad and tragic fact of common resources is that it is easier and more useful to use them than to replenish them. It's easier to throw litter than to pick it up, it's more profitable to release smoke than to contain and scrub it. Anyone who lives in an apartment or condominium knows that you must have a caretaker. Someone must find it their job and duty to keep the commons clean and green, and to deter those who cause problems. The caretaker becomes in themselves a common central resource.
The centrist credo then becomes one of managing the commons, because the individual will for the most part manage themselves. That is the role of a central authority, a caretaker, a central government, derived from the consent of the governed. There are many who would like to banish the caretaker in order to reap maximum personal gain from the common resources. This is a loser's game, especially on a timescale that includes multiple generations. The winning strategy benefits all, because losing is so much harder than winning.
TP |
