Liberalism versus Conservatism

Tomm Hartman was discussing the difference in worldview by liberals and conversatives. He boiled it down to this:

• Conservatives focus on people: People are inherently evil and need to be controlled. This is the basis for wars and the prison industrial police state we find ourselves approaching.
• Liberals focus on society: People are opportunists, and will do bad things, but if things are going generally well, people will be good. This is the basis for social programmes.

Here are my problems. I believe these worldviews are not mutually exclusive, and since societies are comprised of people, they have the same tendencies toward evil. What to do—how to reconcile these? As Carl Jung once said (paraphrasing), “there is nothing worse than a group of “good” people. Just look to the Puritans, Christians in general, and most so-called God-fearing peoples. I don’t know the statistics, but self-professed religious ideologues are behind most of the mass murders and genocides that have occurred on this earth. I understand that calling yourself, for example, a Christian, does not make you a Christian, per se, but with the fallibility doctrines, Christians always have that as an out—sort of like a Get Out of Jail Free card.

So, I guess I am not going anywhere with this, but I’m just saying…

~ by tfacblog on October 17, 2007.