That's ridiculous! Of course it happens! (For example, in the '60s and '70s this used to describe the well-known split between the 'Rockefeller Republicans' and the 'Goldwater Republicans'...
Completely arbitrary. This may help you see minor relative differences between candidates, but it obscures the overall picture of what is happening with them because it tries to anchor the concepts of "liberalism" and "conservatism" in thin air.
This "Rockefeller/Godlwater" dicotomy does not get at the position, the natural position of a person's worldview. It is quite nonsensical to claim a person is a fiscal conservative or liberal simply because he spends more or less than others when the overall paradigm in place requires huge and naturally unnecessary spending. Within such a paradigm both are spending (i.e. consuming) to substantial degrees relative to what nature demands. Both are liberals.
By getting carried away by the petty little distinctions we commonly throw around regarding candidates, we are ignoring what is happening in the aggregate, merely claiming that one candidate is sometimes less of a pig than another, but sometimes more of a pig, depending upon the area under discussion. This explains nothing and in the big scheme is unimpressive.
For example, someone who is a social reactionary --- wanting to go way back in social history --- but who is willing to deficit spend... is QUITE different from a fiscal conservative.
And someone who is a social leftist --- wanting society to go wherever the most politically powerful wish it to go, regardless of the consequence to others--- but who does not want to spend on anything... is QUITE a thing that just does not exist. In this paradigm, both liberals and conservatives, so called, must spend very far beyond what is physically required for survival. The true yardstick by which liberalism and conservatism are measured is truly no longer in use. Today's alleged fiscal conservatives spend essentially in the same overspending trajectory as the liberals. They simply spend on different things.
You can close your eyes to the differences all you want to.... but that doesn't mean they aren't there!
And you can continue to engage in economic myopia all you want, does mean there isn't a big, ultimately more important reality outside of your destructively narrow field-of-view.
No kidding! But they are still an order of magnitude more descriptive then just 'Liberal / Conservative'.
Well that may or may not be true. The point is they are not even close to describing the reality and in fact obscure it. "Liberal" and "Conservative" ought to be terms reserved for the integrated reality juxtaposed to nature. Other terms may be employed to describe relative differences in spending and support for causes. |
