But I don't think the discussion has to be that acrimonious. It seems to me, now that I've thought about it for years (and I've said this on SI before), and gotten over the conservative = bad phase of teenage rebellion, that society needs both conservatives and liberals, and it's fine to talk about what these words mean to us because we use them so often.
Conservatives are crucially important, in ANY area, because unfettered reform tends to go too fast (and too carelessly)- as in revolutionarily fast. That sort of change tends to unhinge people, and society.
I know that such discussions often break down in to "me good/you suck", but they don't HAVE to, if we could just see the value in the other side. While politics is about solving problems, what problems we see, and the solutions we choose, are usually dependent on whether we are conservative or liberal. Or so I think. That's why I thought it was valuable to look at what those words mean. Maybe it isn't valuable, but I thought it might be. |
