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Most people would be surprised by the statement that the left wing, politically correct, easily triggered social justice warriors and the main stream media are conservatives, not liberals. In fact, they are quintessential conservatives. Unfortunately, misunderstanding of these terms and the ideas behind them are prevalent and pervasive in our society. Here I will attempt to fix this problem.

What is liberalism?

Liberalism is the political philosophy that
1. All people are equal under law. We are a nation of rights, not privileges, and everyone has the same rights.
2. People should be allowed to do what they want as long as they aren't infringing upon the rights of others. There should be no victimless crimes.
3. Government should be transparent and accountable for its actions.

Most people will say they agree with this philosophy because you sound like a real asshole if you don't. And to be fair, you are a real asshole if you don't. However, most people are assholes and don't agree, at least not consistently, with the above philosophy.

I deliberately use the term consistently whereas most people would cop out and say "extremist", a label intended to turn off thinking and get people to reject ideas without rational consideration of them. To consistently apply liberalism would be to accept that people should be allowed to make love in public, curse on the airwaves, and wear pro-ISIS t-shirts on airplanes since none of these things violate your rights. Sure, you might not like them, but you own your own life, not anybody else's.

As a rationalist, I consistently use the philosophy of liberalism because I would have to have a good justification for any exceptions, and I cannot think of any. Sure, there are restrictions on freedom of speech such as not being able to make death threats, but these restrictions are perfectly in line with liberalism because death threats violate other people's rights. Your right to make a fist and throw your arm is limited where my nose is present.

Nonetheless, as a consistent liberal I tolerate many things I don't like because I recognize that I do not have the right to use violence or have violence used on my behave to force my will onto other people. This is the core principle of liberalism.

Whenever you make a law, you are using violence and the threat of violence to enforce a will onto other people. This is acceptable when the alternative is worse, say, allowing murder or rape. However, according to liberal philosophy, it is not acceptable to use violence or the threat of violence to force people to conform to arbitrary cultural norms. This is why I support the freedom to do many things that I would never do, including public nudity, prostitution, smoking pot, and gay marriage. I would need a rational reason to be against the legality of any of these things, and my personal feelings, if any, do not constitute a rational reason. Rational reasons are objective.

Now liberalism and conservativism are not litmus tests. There is a continuous spectrum of belief:
consistent liberalism, mostly consistent liberal, inconsistent liberal inconsistent, inconsistent conservative, mostly consistent conservative, consistent conservative

So you can reject public nudity and still be mostly consistently liberal. Consistent liberals are damn rare, and like me, tend to be rationalists first and foremost. Mostly consistent liberals are rare and are among the best people in history. Inconsistent liberals may be about a third of the population. Unfortunately about half of the population is mostly consistently conservative and good deal are inconsistent but with conservative leanings.

What is conservativism?

First off, forget about all that left vs right nonsense. The left and the right are simply arbitrary groupings of unrelated political positions, and these arbitrary groupings vary greatly from country to country and from one period of American history to another. For example, today conservativism in America combines Christianity and gun ownership, two things that completely contradict each other. (I could write a whole thread on how gun use violates everything Jesus stood for, but that's another topic. Jesus was also the mother of all socialists and he's entire message of forgiveness directly contradicts tough-on-crime policies.) Another example is that the right used to mean being against legal alcohol, but today means chugging beer.

The very terms left and right are arbitrary and fluid. It's also ridiculous to think of the political space as being literally one-dimensional, as in there is only one degree of freedom. Instead, you should think of political groupings -- and there can be an arbitrary number of such groupings -- as tribes. Tribe A thinks that hate speech should be banned. Tribe B thinks flag burning should be banned. Tribe C thinks that neither should be banned no matter how offensive. I will use this nomenclature below, but first...

Conservatism is the political philosophy that
1. People are not equal under law. Some people should have more rights than others, and some people should have privileges.
2. People should not be allowed to do what they want even if it does not affect others. People should conform to a state-sponsored culture.
3. The government should not be held accountable for its actions and not punished for crimes.

Yes, this is the actual meaning of conservatism and it reflects the ideology of conservatives perfectly. Of course, no one would admit to believing these things, but they do. Let's examine how and why.

People are not equal under law.

A conservative does not believe in equality under law, and he has what he believes to be damn good reasons for that. The reasons aren't good at all, but they are compelling to people who cannot think clearly and are not wise.

Alex of tribe A thinks that white men should not be legally allowed to use the word nigger because it's a word whose sole purpose is to dehumanize blacks and has a terrible history. However, Alex has no problem with African Americans using the word nigger since they are trying to disempower the word. So Alex has what he sincerely believes is a good reason for an inequality under law based on race. For a white person to say nigger is a hate crime, but not so for a black person.

Bob of tribe B thinks that the police should have rights that the common citizen does not have. After all, the police have to powers to fight crime, deserve to be respected under threat of imprisonment, and should be able to force people to comply with their demands including performing body cavity searches if they suspect someone of possessing drugs.

Corey of tribe C thinks that all speech that does not infringe upon the rights of others (threats of violence, slander, false reports of emergencies) should be legal even if it's offensive. The way to fight racism isn't to sweep it under the rug, but rather to confront it. Corey would protest to allow the KKK to march down main street and then when they did, Corey would counter-protest by holding up huge images of KKK lynchings to shame and discredit them.

Corey also thinks that the power of the police comes from the state and the power of the state comes from the people. Hence, the power of the police ultimately comes from the people. Corey thinks if he doesn't have the right to body cavity search a person, he does not have the right to have someone else on his behalf do such a thing. You cannot give someone else that which you don't possess. So the people cannot give the police the right to do anything they themselves don't have the right to do. The only reason the police can make arrests is that any citizen can make an arrest. Sure, the police have huge advantages like extensive training, massive funding, huge coordination, and lots of weapons and tools, but they are not above the law and they have to obey the exact same set of laws as everyone else. They have no rights that we don't have.

Alex is a left-wing conservative. Bob is a right-wing conservative. Corey is a liberal. Alex and Bob, or more generally, tribe A and tribe B have far more in common with each other than either has with Corey or tribe C.

People should not be allowed to do what they want even if it does not affect others. People should conform to a state-sponsored culture.

Conservatives believe in state-sponsored and enforced culture. The actual culture desired varies from tribe to tribe, but that's not important. What's important is that the government, through force and often violent force, forces cultural ideas and behaviors onto the public.

Alex thinks that there should be restrictions on what people can say on college campuses to protect the feelings of students and that those who do not comply should be expelled. Alex also thinks that companies should be forced to hire minorities even if there is no discrimination and the lack of minorities hired is simply because minorities aren't seeking jobs in certain industries. Alex thinks that half or more of the senate should be women even if women aren't pursuing political careers in that proportion or even if the women elected aren't representing women's issues. These are all examples of the government forcing culture onto people.

Bob thinks that the government should uphold Christian values. He wants prayers in school -- that's Christian prayers, not Islamic prayers, of course! -- and the Ten Commandments in the court house. He also wants the government to encourage military enrollment, hunting, and gun ownership. He wants gays to be silent and employers to be able to refuse to hire gays on religious objections. Again, these are all examples of government forcing a specific culture onto people.

The fact is that throughout history every conservative tribe has hated every other conservative tribe. Sure, they all have different cultures, but they are all conservatives because they think the government should ensure that only their own culture is allowed to exist. This is the heart of conservatism. It's not the arbitrary culture, but the forcing of that culture onto others that defines conservatism.

The government should not be held accountable for its actions and not punished for crimes.

The previous two ideas, no one will admit they hold this idea, but it is very common. And like before, conservatives always have what they consider to be a damn good reason for it.

Alex thinks that state-run schools should be allowed complete discretion in "protecting children" from harms like guns and racism. So Alex supports a school that expels a student for pointing his finger like a gun at another child and saying "bang, bang". Alex also supports laws preventing the student's parents from suing the school or getting the administrators fired for incompetence and harming the student by wrongly expelling him. After all, Alex reasons, the school's trying to do the right thing and if held accountable, they might refrain from taking appropriate action.

Bob thinks that the police should not be charged with murder when killing unarmed people. Even when a cop shoots a sleeping 9-year-old girl in the head and then frames the grandmother, he should not be charged. After all, cops are the good guys and they have no motive to commit murder (not true, but that's another story). So any time a cop kills someone who doesn't deserve it, it's just a mistake and we have to protect cops from legal liability for these deaths. After all, Bob reasons, the cops are trying to do the right thing and if held accountable, they might refrain from taking appropriate action.

Again, tribe A and tribe B hold identical positions just with different arbitrary cultural preferences. The liberal stance is to hold everyone to the same legal standards.

So although no conservative has ever admitted to holding the clearly repugnant positions that define conservatism, they all clearly do believe in those positions and think they have good justifications for it. Ultimately conservatism is the belief that the ends justify the means and that one's own tribe's culture should be the dominant or sole one.

Summary

Liberalism and conservatism are opposite ideologies. However, the American political left and the American political right are both conservative tribes. The two hate each other as conservative tribes always hate other conservative tribes, even more then they hate liberals. One conservative tribe falsely calls the other liberal, and that other falsely accepts the title, but in fact it is not at all liberal and is identical to the right in every way except the specific arbitrary cultural preferences.

Liberalism is the far nobler, more pragmatic, and more ethical philosophy. However, few people are consistently liberal because they let their arbitrary cultural preferences to influence what they believe the law should be. Despite that, these people won't admit to rejecting the clearly more ethical principles of liberalism or admit to accepting the clearly dubious principles of conservatism. People will always find some way to rationalize the hypocrisy of conservative principles because tribalism is a strong force on humans, evolutionary baggage from our hunter-gatherer past.

Ideally people would be consistently liberal, but even being liberal on 90% of issues would be a vast improvement over the status quo.

Most importantly, remember that liberalism and conservatism are beliefs in specific sets of rights or values, but rather liberalism is the belief that every person is equal under law with the same rights, whatever those rights might be, and conservatism is the belief that inequality is necessary for the greater good of society and that society is better off with some specific culture, regardless of what that culture is.

#politics