Republican or Democrat #1

Conservative vs. Liberal views of change

I am often asked about the difference between the two political parties in the United States.  Sometimes, the questioner is also asking what should the difference be.  Either question asks what are good reasons for supporting one side over against the other. 

There is no simple answer. It may, therefore, be helpful to examine the possibilities in more than one blog.  I plan to do it in four parts, offering four different plausible ideas.

The first considers how people think about change in the economic, social and political conditions of American society. 

In prior writing I’ve used Pirsig’s analogy of raising a car to change a tire.  Change is required to lift the wheel off the ground.  Stability is necessary to keep the change in place.  Hence the jack.  It has two mechanism, a lever to lift and a ratcheting system to hold the gains in place.  A “liberal” principle and a “conservative.”  Both essential.  In this sense, all of us are both liberal and conservative. It depends!

The image of the accelerator and the brake serves the same idea.  In each case one can choose, a faster pace of change, slowing down, or even a stop.  And some apparently want to go in reverse. 

That is to say, when they contemplate social change--new processes, new structures, new goals, new beliefs—some see the way ahead and say, “let’s get on with it.  We have not realized our full potential as a nation, our idea of a good society.  We haven’t raised the car far enough, or we need accelerate to avoid arriving too late at our destination.  Others caution restraint. 

Why?  What is the case for more or faster change and what for stability? 

The case for the latter is basically that “too much, too fast” risks all that has been accomplished.  Success is fragile.  Pile one more change on the many that are already in place (probably precariously in place) and the whole will collapse and result in chaos.  How strong are the beams of the house?  Do we have the resources to cope with the byproducts, often dangerous, of reckless change? 

The case for further change, on the other hand, depends upon two factors (in addition to the point made above that one must believe that we have not yet arrived at “the promised land”).  The first is the changing state of opportunity.   New ideas, new technologies, changed social conditions offer different and better tools by which change can be achieved.  We have, that is, new abilities that will enable us to do more than we could in the past. 

The second is also a matter of the underlying environment.  If conditions have changed and the old ways are no longer functional, no longer serving our needs, we may need to change. In the words of Abraham Lincoln “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.” 

Which do we embrace?  Conservative or liberal?  I leave it to the reader to judge for him or herself.  I think it depends upon how a person understands the needs of the present moment.    

But there are other ways to look at this problem.  I’ll try to deal with them in three more blogs.