"A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time."
- Alfred E. Wiggam
"A liberal is a man who believes that misery should be spread equally."
- Mark Maresca
The terms conservative and liberal are labels. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with labels. Especially if they are applied to someone other than ourselves.
We need labels to help to identify others, how they think, whether they might present some risk to us or not. They are descriptives, words that help us to order our thoughts about people.
We usually use such labels about "others," not about ourselves or those who think like us.
Trouble arises when labels don't fit people. These particular labels don't fit any one person. Instead they fit concepts of groups of people. They are stereotypes.
Stereotypes, by their nature, are inevitably wrong when they are applied to individuals. Stereotypes are pejorative, their connotative meanings intended to express disapproval of whomever they are applied to.
To come full circle, the terms conservative and liberal are words of prejudice. Words of prejudice are used by people who are prejudiced.
People who are prejudiced devoutly deny their prejudice. To them, the way they think is perfectly acceptable and usually logical. Prejudiced people have loads of arguments at their disposal, though all their arguments are highly editorialized, one-sided.
Words of prejudice are fighting words, though they may be used like gossip or cheap shots by those who have no intention of stepping into a ring with those to whom they give their labels.
Too bad. While I am a devoted pacifist, I believe that no one deserves to be beaten more than people who are prejudiced. They are bullies who wear the cloak of decency to cover their cowardice.
Watch for the people who use the terms conservative and liberal. They don't justly apply to any one person, but they will tell you something about the people who use these words.
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to reveal the bullies to those who are their innocent victims.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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Comments: 21
Gender differences, yes. Gender bias, no. Science is finding ways in which the genders differ so often lately.
Even the word gender is innaccurate. The mix of proteins and hormones is the same in every person. The differences are in the proportions of each. Sometimes even outer clues tell more about what the parents of children want than what the children are.
Think you shouldn't teach that in a classroom? Many parents would say no. But the kids experience "differences" among them every day. Unless the reasons for these differences are discussed openly, some kids become the one who are picked on. You know what that does to a young person and the influence it has on them as an adult.
More to think about.
The comments by Alfred E. Wiggam and Mark Maresca may sound unrealistic and stereotypical but liberals and conservatives at extreme end of the spectrum fit that description. It's just when we start throwing those words around based on one or two opinions an individual may have. I know most people aren't easily pegged into one or other camp. But I also know a lot of people who are so liberal and conservative it's scary.
Labels, stereotypes and words of prejudice all are applied to people, rather than to expressed ideas, opinions or beliefs. As any psychologist will tell you, this is a dirty way of fighting. Marriage counsellors will tell you that it's the fastest route to divorce.
Criticise what a person says or writes, disagree with what he believes, but don't attack him as a person. That steals his humanity. It's how many married people find themselves divorced because they kept fighting by attacking each other as people rather than disagreeing with what they said.
Today, billions of people hate "America" or "Americans" for example. What they really hate is the present US administration and/or the inhumane ways of US based multinational corporations. Most Americans are very nice and compassionate people. Hating the people because you had their president is a form of labelling, of prejudice.
There are laws that protect individual people against unfair attacks with words against what people say or write. These are libel laws. However, when the attacks with words are against the person, not what the person says, they are called hate laws. The latter are criminal laws, whereas the former are civil laws.
No one fits the stereotype of liberal or conservative. They may say things that make us think of these words. But what they say or write is not the whole of who they are.
Attacking the humanity of a person is morally wrong. Labelling people as conservative or liberal is a form of attack against the humanity of a person. No religion supports this, although extreme forms of politics such as Naziism and some flavours of communism do support attacks against the humanity of a person or a people. When they act on these emotional feelings, it's called genocide or pogroms or the kinds of activities carried out by the Ku Klux Klan.
We all have political views on most subjects, some stronger than others, but they sometimes fit beneath alternating labels. Why is that so hard to believe or understand that you don't have to be locked to one?
I am somewhat amazed that starting months ago people are saying vote "all" one way or the other here in two years from now, without a clue as to whom will be on the ballot yet. I guess you could call it label voting.....?
Thanks for the thoughts Bill.
One very nice woman I know, only watches FOX news because "they're the only ones who get it right." That's what the people at church had told her and having watched FOX she had to agree. I don't get it. And of course, as a result I won't discuss politics or religion with her. I like her. She's a nice, well meaning person but she's someone I describe as conservative.
On the other end of the spectrum, I knew this guy back in college who was so liberal he couldn't see the other side at all. He would make statements like "I don't see how someone as bright as you are could take that position," whenever we had an issue on which I took what would be considered the conservative side. Now this guy was just being ignorant and just plain wrong because he assumed anyone who was conservative was stupid. I won't even get into the things he would say about people who believed in God. He actually walked away from me when I pointed out Einstein believed in God and asked if he thought Einstein was an idiot?
In any case, most people are not that extreme, I agree. But I do know of people who are. They are not bad people, they just have their minds made up one way or another and it seems they don't want to hear the facts or even make an attempt to see the other side.
I've seen some examples here on Gather of that kind of mentality and I've pretty much tried to avoid them.
Bill Allin"
Hello Bill aren't you engaging in a paradox? By writing an article that defines what you construe as how people who label themselves and others a form of doing what you say they do?
John, people who say that you should vote "all" one way are dangerous because no political ideology is "ideal." They are people who advocate that no one should think, just vote the way they are told.
Marsha, people at the political extremes have retreated from the real world to reside in a protected (if overly simplified and risky) small world in which they feel safe because they know who their "friends" are.
It wasn't just Einstein who believed in God. Darwin feared that his theory of a succession of life would be misconstrued by some who would then say that there was no God. That "all one way or the other" way of thinking has existed for as long as politics has existed.
To believe that God created an exquisite masterpiece beyond human comprehension in six earth days, then never again created anything is a fairly simple kind of thinking. A creator, like any inventor, continues to create.
I do not intend to slide into a religious debate. I only want to point out that any kind of thinking or belief set that advocates absolutes, and in particular only one set of absolutes, should be viewed with suspicion.
We are not the world. We are each only one set of experiences out of 6.7 billion on the earth today.
I found it amusing.
How you do you get I am bigoted and extreme?
You are showing me how little understanding you really have of others. I grew up in a very ethnically diverse environment and have friends of all kinds of backgrounds. Friends I still see and socialize with from back when I was a kid. Your attitude on that mark I find offensive.
I don't even know what you mean by the extreme comments so I am not going to try to respond to that part of your remarks. I think maybe you ar ethe one that needs to do some reflecting becaue I was posting a friendly comment , making what was meant to be a comical comment and you turned it into accusations you really have no right to make, you don't know me.
Your amusing comment failure to breach the horizon of my sense of humour. But then, you and I likely come from different cultures as well as different countries.
You hav every right to take offence at my retort if you intended it to be funny and I found it bordering on bigotry.
To be candid, I had no idea what you intended by your remarks. I had to take a shot at figuring it out. Apparently I was mistaken with my interpretation. That goes to show how easy it is to misinterpret the comments of others, something that happen shockingly often in Gather.
However, you obviously misinterpreted the main point of my article (see the first sentence above), which may indicate a weakness in what I wrote.
Please note, Keith, that my exact words were "your comment is an example." This does not mean that you or your opinions exactly match the point I was making. I used your words as a way to show how people with extreme beliefs and opinions use words to obfuscate the intent behind their meaning. You would be safe to assume that your attempt at humour did not have the intent that I was using your words to exemplify.
It also (both of our misinterpretations) shows that our words do not fully represent us as persons, which was part of the intent of my main message. Misinterpretations of words (as we showed) may be a way of labelling people just as much as stereotypes do.
Please note that at no point my my reply did I refer to you personally, only to your words. You took my words as if they were a personal attack on you, which they were not. My reply had nothing at all to do with you.
I don't think I missed your point of your article. Jus thought it ironic at the end and humorous, not that you inteneded that but that is what I saw. I haven't visited your web site , so I am not sure what cultural differences we are experiencing. I see from your spelling i.e. humour, that you are probably British. I guess there would be something lost across the pond. One of my earliest friends, Ian walker , was from England, haven't seen or heard from him for a while.
Anyhow , my comments were meant to be humorous, I guess I'll have to tune to some old Monty Python to bone up on my British humor :>)
Believe it or not (few Canadians do), cultural differences between Canadians and Americans are increasing and widening, not narrowing as one might expect. In fact, there are widening cultural differences between the various parts of Canada. I plan to move in 2008 to one that is more in tune with what I want from life. Right now I live in the shadow of Toronto, which is the centre of the universe. That's "centre" as opposed to "center of the universe," which is New York. We in rural Ontario are, it seems, Toronto's outhouse.
I would love the see the use of those terms return to their original meanings, but even then some with liberal political beliefs had conservative religious and social beliefs
And some political conservatives had liberal social and religious beliefs.
Political rhetoric of the last 20 years has muddied the definitions of these perfectly useful words.
The terms were and are frequently used derisively by both sides, but now it is more confused that ever.
It is so bad that I frequently say things like,
"Capitalism is not a form of government"
Under the as still defined in the dictionary meanings of these words, I find no problem identifying a political candidate as liberal or conservative, No problem with referring to a person as liberal or conservative, they are not obscenities.
There are real differences, they each have different goals.
Liberal:
1. favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.
2. (often cap.) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform.
3. favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
4. of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant
Conservative:
1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, monarchies, aristocracies, and to limit change.
4. (often cap.) of or pertaining to the Conservative party esp. in Gr. Britain.
9. .a supporter of conservative political policies.
I like the way the term "humanist" is used today. However, be aware that today's meaning will be perverted in the future, likely for the political gain of those who oppose policies that humanists would support.
Humanist: I care about people, whether they be labelled or not, coloured or bleached skin, tall or short, in a wheelchair or on stilts, atheist or devotee, rich or poor. I also care about whether people want to learn or not.