Damn Liberals…
Liberal minded people are frustratingly more comfortable challenging and being challenged by new ideas and ways of doing. Things are always shifting as new ideas, new science, new methods are found. You can’t rely on stability with liberal thinkers. To them the scientific method and critical thinking is obvious and natural, not a threat to their ego or social standing. These people are not seriously bound by traditions and actively pursue alternative ways and means to analyze, improve and make better, to liberate, the way society lives. It seems they like change just for the sake of change. And, my goodness, their sense of morality sure is a moving and soft target!
The liberal minded often feel frustrated and vexed by traditional, often outdated and irrational, standards that exist in society and see them as barriers to their natural truths. Liberals will challenge these standards with natural truths derived through logic and science at the risk of being seen as rabble rousers, miscreants, rebellious and heretical. Liberals become serious threats to traditional power and authority as they point out ‘unnatural truths’, the often illogical, precarious, and sometimes nefarious, means by which authority controls society. Liberals are far more comfortable with people of different backgrounds, creeds, religions, cultures, lifestyles and sexual orientation. They are often also more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty, understanding that not much in our world is rock solid and unchanging. Dogma is anathema then to the liberal minded.
All of this, of course, is terribly unsettling to those who are not liberal thinkers, who desire structure even if flawed, for to them liberal thinkers are indecisive, too broad in their scope, too amenable to all points of view and willing to forsake majority opinion for that of the minority. Liberal thinkers are quick to downplay tradition as dogma, a negative thing blocking progress, and therefore their motives become suspicious to non liberal thinkers for whom dogma is the bedrock of their lives. Liberals are a kind of check on the wonton consolidation of power to the point where, if necessary, they are the catalyst towards change by pointing out to others the excesses of those in power and control. Liberals are much more likely to use reason and logic, critical thinking skills, to point out the flaws of authority and the irrational often emotional reasoning behind authority, while in return authority are likely to use nostalgia, native distrust of ‘the other’ and traditional values as being of more importance. Depending on the degree of resistance of authority to liberal challenges, liberals can resort to extreme measures to effect change. And, of course, authority, to conserve its power, does the same to maintain its control and negate change. To liberals power is in the diversity of its people in mind and body, the freedom to be and do without discrimination or restriction, while to conservatives authority and power is in the consolidation of mind and body, to focus purpose by predetermining method and goal, emphasizing adherence to them and de-emphasizing difference, by any means and by force if necessary. Jan. 4, 2020