----Platt, Sunday, July 08, 2007 10:36----- The freedoms that matters to conservative besides the free market are freedom of speech, religion, trial by jury, etc. as described by Pirsig as intellectual values, guaranteed in the U.S. by the Bill of Rights. "Liberal" in the U.S. has come to mean left-wing communism/socialism. ------
Thanks for the laugh, Platt. I'm afraid that I completely disagree that in the U.S. conservative = guardian of liberty & liberal = communist. Current U.S. "conservatives" may value the free market, but those in power certainly have little respect for freedom of religion (see the blurring of church & state that is Faith Based Initiatives now defended by the conservative Supreme Court), trial by jury (suspension of habeas corpus, anyone?), nor freedom of speech (disagree with the President's Iraq policy == not supporting the troops == unpatriotic). On the other hand, while U.S. "liberals" may not be in love with an unfettered free market, they tend to support the other of Pirsig's intellectual values and donate money to the ACLU and Freedom From Religion to defend them. Really, though this conservative/liberal dichotomy is all but useless to have a meaningful conversation. Let's talk some specifics. If we were to identify the subpopulations within these over-broad categories, we might have something to talk about. Libertarians do support all of the freedoms you spell out, but they are a minority "conservative" party in the U.S. The majority of the Republicans in power appear to be Christian social conservatives who seek to legislate their religious values and thereby shred those Constitutional freedoms. Within the "liberal" flank, there are those on the "left" who lean toward democratic socialism. Most centrist Democrats, however, want to promote the social good through government regulation and incentivization of private industry and public-private partnerships with respect to medical care and the New Deal social safety net programs. The number of communists in the U.S. must be vanishingly small, however, as I don't hear anyone talking about turning over the means of production to the state. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
