> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:27 AM, <northsunm at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > This confuses conservative with not being open to changing ones
> ideas.
> > But there are plenty of radical leftists who remain radical leftists into
> > old age. Are they conservatives? Others change their views in old age and
> > become conservative. I guess this makes them liberals!
> > The whole idea of dividing the world into liberals and
> conservatives
> > is a bit nutty or at least hopelessly imprecise. Is Justin Raimondo
> > conservative or liberal. Obama is supposedly a liberal but on foreign
> policy
> > issues such as Afghanistan he is more hawkish than Bush was.
> >
> > Cheers, k hanly
> >
>
> I would second the notion that the terms liberal vs conservative are
> hopelessly imprecise, but it seems nearly all political terminology is
> these
> days.
>
> I for one have attempted to not call right-wing reactionaries
> "conservatives" because they seem to not be interested in conserving
> anything. Not oil, farm land, undeveloped land, or anything else. Why
> call
> that "conservative"?
Perhaps a rationalist, totalizing nomenclature would invent some more "accurate" terminology for the modern center-right. But the words we use have their origin in practice, in informal social consensus, and in the slow but steady approval of cultural revolution. Does not the attempt to invent superior labels bespeak the Left's hyperrationalism, even its creeping totalitarianism? This kind of verbal analysis is inconsistent with the pluralism of a free society.