[lbo-talk] libs vs. cons.

[Jim Devine]

"Central to this movie's [SAVING PRIVATE RYAN's] politics is the issue
of compassion and its opposite, force. Liberals love compassion, hate
force; conservatives hate compassion, love force. Liberals spread
compassion magnanimously all over the universe, conservatives hoard it
dearly for their own kind, and sometimes won't spend it even then.
Liberals want you to obey them because they feel your pain, have
negotiated you to their position, and have enlightened you with their
higher morality. Conservatives want you to obey them or they'll beat
you up."

-- Stephen Hunter, WaPo movie critic and self-styled conservative, in
NOW PLAYING AT THE VALENCIA, Simon & Shuster, 2005, p. 177. Written
August, 1998. He sees SAVING PRIVATE RYAN as a profoundly conservative
film.

I think the statement above is pretty good as a description of lib vs.
con on the level of rhetoric or ideology. As for Bill ("I feel your
pain") Clinton, he was liberal in rhetoric, but of course in practice
it was different.
--
Jim Devine [neither lib nor con]  / "There can be no real individual
freedom in the presence of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles