It is unfortunate that I have given you the impression that is what I am after. It isn't.
I do think that conservatives have been trained over the last generation to believe that strawman because it is far easier to put it up and then shout it down than it would be to engage with liberals, listen to what we propose and our motives for doing so, and thinking about it awhile before responding. I believe that if you did this you would find that our basic values and even our goals are not so different from yours, or, more accurately, that there is more variance within liberalism than there is between liberalism and conservatism.
I also think that conservatives would make the same statement above, just flipping the two terms around.
Doubtless I don't always succeed but I do try, deliberately, not to slag
all conservatives or
all conservatism, and I bend over backwards to try to tease out the IMO damaging aspects of what currently is disguised by the far right as "conservative," but which in reality is an authoritarian radicalism to which the right has gradually drifted over the past 50 years.
I think there are likely folks on the right here on the Cafe who do the same, though the fact that I can't really think of any speaks volumes about the strength of my own confirmation bias and other cognitive deficiencies.
But here, I'll try again.
I don't want a meritocratic, scientific
Wings Over the World class to dominate politics.
I don't want to intrude on the way people choose to live, provided they are not hurting other people.
But there are such things as basic rights, and "God told me to" or "this is what we've always done" are not magic words that enable one group to violate the rights of another group. The political history of America is the story of gradually making good on the Founders' vision of government protecting the rights of "life, liberty and happiness" of all citizens.
We both agree that these rights are not granted by government, they're axiomatic -- for some, by virtue of being human, for others as a gift from a man in the clouds.
Where we disagree is the extent to which the government is empowered to stop the predation against these rights by one group on another. Conservatives prefer a smaller role and in consequence, or in some cases by design, this leads inexorably to outcomes that favor the already powerful in expanding their field of action while those of less powerful groups' shrinks.
Liberalism is the extension of the famous quote about the duty of a free press: "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Conservatism at this time and place has resulted, whether intended or not, in the opposite: "to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted." Therefore I put my weight behind liberalism to correct the imbalance. At another time and place I can imagine feeling that liberalism has gone too far, and I would shift my weight the other way.
That doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, so it's easier to portray liberals with a variety of easy-to-attack caricatures. But if you want to engage with the real thing, there it is.
