The Content, and the Malcontent

PEOPLE SOMETIMES SEEM a bit confused about what liberals and conservatives are. They start talking about things like "big government", or "small government", as if either libs or conservatives have a monopoly on either size. Instead, think of it in terms of money. A person may be either conservative with money, or liberal with it. The conservative spends little, the liberal spends, well, liberally. the key concept is change. A liberal's money changes hands more often than one who stewards money conservatively. The more change one wants, the more liberal one is, the less change, the more conservative. We live in a liberal world, because the world changes. with time, changed accumulates, and becomes considerable, even if it occurs slowly; a conservative desires a slower rate of change. A liberal might respond: "who doesn't want to change this world"? who indeed? Why, someone who is personally successful in the status quo is far more likely to resist change. Hence, conservatives, particularly in the United States, tend to be more successful than liberals, more content with less change, less inclined to complain. Liberals are complainers, advocates of change. A person who is devoted to one tradition is more likely to be devoted to another. In America, free enterprise and Christianity are traditional, thus the two are joined at the hip,bundled into the conservative mindset. Conservatism embraces tradition, liberalism seeks innovation.the dirty little secret is that we are all combinations of both viewpoints. No one is pure! How strange, and how human, that we tend to defend our own majority viewpoint, whichever one claims most of our allegiance, and to discredit the other at all costs, even while embracing some of each.