There are plenty of radicals attacking the West, attacking the idea of merit, promoting ethnic rights over individual rights, promoting socialism, attacking the "rule of law" as a class construct, attacking the independent press as corporate shills, attacking the centrality of rational discourse by promoting the idea of the radical indeterminacy of texts, and more. They write for journals like The Nation, Mother Jones, and October. The populate many major universities, or sit in think tanks like the Institute for Policy Study. Liberals are generally, although not universally, complacent about such attacks. Some liberals even view them indulgently as being necessary to the health of society, which may be true, but only on the condition that they are met with rebuttal in the marketplace of ideas.
I was referring to liberals treating these attacks lightly.
Viz. Tevye in the opening of "Fiddler on the Roof".
Society working through its problems was in contrast to forcing solutions. Conservatives are more prone to let things work themselves out.
The main way in which one may worsen the situation is backlash, which was the point of my set up. I was not addressing the provenance of beliefs, I was addressing the delicacy of using coercion against the grain of settled social beliefs and practices, whatever the segment of society affected. Since liberals are more prone to try to change society through activist government, it is primarily a cautionary note for them, but it may have broader application.
I have explained in an earlier post that in the broadest sense, most conservatives are trying to conserve liberalism, and that my comments have only to do with those label "liberals" in contemorary society. The fact is, many practices were permissable until fairly recently, for example, a moment of silence in school exercises, or the use of rotating ministers to offer a benediction at high school commencement, and those are the things I was referring to.
Conservatives emphasize different values than liberals. That is a fact, and does not mean that the values liberals promote are worthless, or that they don't care at all for the values that conservatives care for, it only means that they have different approaches to the world, and different hierarchies of value. |
