It’s a point I’ve made myself in conversation, though hardly original with me: what used to be known as classical liberalism included sets of fundamental beliefs that would now be instantly labeled as ‘conservative’. Progressives started calling themselves liberals in the 1920s and ’30s because too many people had found out how nasty a lot of progressive policies really were … and, about eight years ago, liberals started calling themselves progressives again because ‘liberal’ had likewise come to be equated with sloppy thinking, slack morals, and stealth communism.
On the other side of things, conservatives as people have most of the right ideas, but movement-conservative leaders have proven to be not immune to wanting to preserve their own positions even at the expense of the goals they claim to champion. (This is especially amped up when ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ are taken as synonymous. I wish! Too many Republicans differ from liberals only in degree, or sometimes only in how they and liberals describe the exact same things.)
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Date: 2017-02-01 07:36 am (UTC)On the other side of things, conservatives as people have most of the right ideas, but movement-conservative leaders have proven to be not immune to wanting to preserve their own positions even at the expense of the goals they claim to champion. (This is especially amped up when ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ are taken as synonymous. I wish! Too many Republicans differ from liberals only in degree, or sometimes only in how they and liberals describe the exact same things.)