patrick.net

Since this is a recurring question, I'll explain here and make this the go to thread for questions regarding liberalism vs the left vs the right vs conservatism.

Liberalism is a social political philosophy, as oppose to an economic political philosophy, that holds the following principles.
1. All people are equal under law.
2. We are a nation of rights, not a nation of privileges.
3. The purpose of government is to protect rights.
4. People should be allowed to pursue happiness however they want as long as they aren't infringing upon other people's rights. There should be no victimless crimes.

Conservatism is the rejection of the above four principles.

1. People are not equal under law. This could take the form of racism, classism, or the belief that the police should be given "discretion" under the law to do things that would be crimes for other people.

2. We are a nation of privileges, not rights. If you commit a crime, you should not be allowed to vote. Law biding citizens should be allowed to possess guns, but not anyone who has broken a law. The state can execute people because some people don't have the right to live. When conservatives talk about "rights", they really mean "privileges". A right, by definition, cannot be taken away. A freedom that is conditional and can be taken away is the very definition of a privilege.

3. The government isn't just or even primarily about protecting rights. The government should take action to do one or more of the following that have nothing to do with rights:
- ensure the purity of races
- impose family values
- promote good Christian values like the sanctity of marriage
- stop hate speech
- advocate cultural preferences
- instill a sense of patriotism
- advance our economic interests
- secure natural resources from other nations

4. The government should restrict the people from exercising their free choices when those choices contradict the values promoted by the state even when those choices are private and do not infringe upon anyone else's rights. For example, one or more of the following should be illegal.
- premarital sex
- gay sex
- prostitution
- any form of consensual sex
- displays of irreverence to religion like posing in front of a statue of Jesus such that it looks like Jesus is giving you head (yes, this happened and was prosecuted)
- burning the flag
- waving a confederate or Nazi flag
- being nude in public
- having sex in public
- censoring hate speech
- smoking weed
- listening to obscene music
- interracial or same sex marriage

The important thing to remember is that not every conservative has the same agenda as every other conservative. You'll have one tribe of conservatives burning the Koran, and another tribe burning the American flag. Those two tribes will detest each other, but they are both equally conservative. It's not the particular arbitrary cultural preferences that define conservatism. The defining characteristic of conservatism is the use of force by the state to mandate those cultural preferences and intolerance of any behavior that offends the established culture.

There are many conservative tribes. You might think of a stereotypical conservative watching NASCAR and drinking beer, as oppose to wines like liberals drink. However, there are many conservative tribes that want to ban all alcohol including beer. One conservative tribe will always hate all other conservative tribes.

The left and the right are two opposing conservative tribes, but there are many more. Islamists are a conservative tribe with many things in common with the right, but with a different religion. Needless to say, the right and Islamists hate each other. Statists are a conservative tribe with many things in common with the left but wanting more of a capitalist culture. The pc-state tribe is also like the left, but wanting social control over what people say and think about each other.

Centralists are simply people who take bits and pieces of other tribal cultures, but still believe in a firm hand in enforcing control over culture. Moderates begin to move away from all conservatives in a direction orthogonal to them all. Liberals are the antithesis of all conservative tribes, and are farther from any of them then any are from another conservative tribe.

To illustrate, think of the political positions being embedded in a three-dimensional space inside a cone.

Of course, we could and should add many more dimensions to properly model the political space, but this model is good enough to illustrate the difference between liberalism and all forms of conservatism.

#politics #liberalism #conservatism #left #right