Thomas wrote:okie wrote:It makes you blood run cold to conserve any value or principle, or to conserve resources, budgets, etc.?
Not the values of slavery, of women being disenfranchised and quasi-property of their husbands, of criminalizing interracial marriage, and of gay sex being a capital crime. All of these values were prominent in your founding fathers' moral universe. Conservatives have defended them against liberals trying to get rid of them. I'm glad they lost -- because these conservative values were oppressive, and I am a (classical) liberal.
The founding fathers were in no way 'conservative', else we would not have a democratic Republic. They were pretty much classical liberals all. While I generally don't use Wikipedia as a source, they have done a fairly credible job of defining classical liberalism
HERE. That definition far better describes modern conservatism than it does modern liberalism in the United States.
As for past 'sins', there are no nations existing anywhere that have not had laws on the books that don't meet 21st centural moral criteria. I'm sure you would agree that Germany's past is not stellar when it comes to human freedoms and rights.
"Progressive" could reasonably apply to either American ideology in different ways--it is simply a word co-opted by liberals when the term 'liberal' was viewed negatively by a large number of Americans.
The more accurate term for modern American liberalism I think would be 'socialist". This is driven home every time I hear a Nancy Pelosi suggest that the government should take over the oil companies or a Hillary Clinton say the government should confiscate their profits or a Barack Obama say that the capital gains tax should be reinstated to its former level and the rich should be taxed more, not as a matter of economics but as a matter of fairness.
Quote:okie wrote:favor changing to liberality, no holds barred?
... except the equal liberty of everybody else. This qualification has been central to liberal thought since at least Thomas Jefferson. And with this qualification, yes, I prefer that.
Modern liberalism can talk a good game but too often has demonstrated that it defends only liberty for those who share its own philosophy, beliefs, and practices. Those who do not are to be excoriated, scorned, ridiculed, and, if possible, silenced and/or punished. There is no room for acceptance of any other point of view.
