Thread: lilberal v. conservative

I'd like to say up front that I already hate myself for diving into this thread.

There are two philosophical concepts that concern me the most - and they can be embraced by conservatives and liberals alike.

They are the concepts of social justice and social engineering. In my opinion they are the cornerstones of what has always been bad in human nature.

Social justice requires that one group of people be made to pay for the sins committed by another group of people against yet another group of people. The people that must pay may or may not even be related to the group that committed the sin - but pay they will -either financially or with freedoms and liberties. This is one area that both groups derive much of their power. The offended groups can easily be swayed to give anyone power who will offer to be the broker between the people who pay and the people who receive.

Social engineering allows a group to take it's ideology and force conformity to it. Again, both conservatives and liberals do this - although one group does it more radically and with little regard to personal liberty. So there is a struggle at the ideology level to determine how a society will function and behave, and often with unintended consequences. Again - much power is on the table for anyone that can convince a group that they will benefit more by relinquishing freedom for security and to trust them to benevolently broker it.

In social engineering, there is also danger in the societal sub-division. Witness the last election. Liberals and conservatives had to be very concerned to be able to get the "x" vote. X being, black, Hispanic, white women, Muslim, white Christian male, far left, far right etc., etc.. Each group wants something different socially. They have subdivided ideologically and yet they want to vote for only one group or another that will drive their specific ideology and make everyone else conform. This is why Governments have no business socially engineering it's peoples to a specific ideology. What they do need to do is make sure that it's peoples are free to live their own ideology with the understanding that it will not interfere with another's ability to do the same.

Ok that's it - bring it on