What's a Conservative? What's a Progressive?

What's a Conservative? What's a Progressive? Randall Niles tries to break through all the labels, caricatures, stereotypes, and name-calling to understand the true difference between a Progressive and a Conservative. In light of the recent political division in the United States, it seems appropriate to break through all the misinformation and just look at the basic ideologies. Progressives want fundamental change in society. Conservatives want to preserve the fundamentals in society. It's not a matter of Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative... It's simply viewing the country as needing wholesale change or partial reform. Do we hold onto liberty, entrepreneurship, small government, strong security, innovation, private property, low taxation, individual rights, freedom of speech, association, and religion, or do we socially evolve into a new, enlightened world where the state makes our decisions, distributes our wealth, tells us what to believe, and creates our collective good? This has nothing to do with the stereotypes of Rush Limbaugh or Nancy Pelosi -- this is a simple worldview difference.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• What's a Conservative
• Conservative
• Progressive
• Republican
• Democrat
• Liberal
• Politics
• Rush Limbaugh
• Nancy Pelosi
• Political Views
• Political Ideologies
• Randall Niles

[JoKo203]

@redsox1006 You're absolutely right, and it took me some time to understand this concept. The message of Christ is for YOU to personally redistribute your wealth to charity, NOT for the government to forcibly do it. Government intervention doesn't make people more giving and charitable, when you separate somebody from their money, and give that money to others, it makes the others feel more entitled.

[redsox1006]

@JoKo203 I believe you misunderstand the position that right-wingers take on this issue. Redistribution of wealth is perfectly acceptable, as long as it is done privately. It should be up to each and every individual how they want to spend there money, and if they want to "redistribute" it to the poor, for example. The government should have no right to force them to sacrifice part of their income to welfare, for instance. In fact, conservatiuves are more charitable over than liberals.

[SmartGuy4today]

The current people in society who define themselves as conservatives are the following:

Fundamental Fascists (Rush Limbaugh)

Fundamental Theocrats (The 700 Club)

Fundamental Anarchists (Those arguing against raising the dept ceiling)

Fundamental Populists (Sarah Palin anyone?)

Fundamental Racists (The people who really hate Obama)

Fundamental Ideologues (Rick Perry)

And Fundamental Demagogues (Everyone in the Republican Party)

[SmartGuy4today]

What we define as being conservative is better defined as social conservative and even fiscal conservative is still social conservative, because it is mostly about keeping wealthy people, wealthy or preventing further social changes in society that would come from having more public programs.

And social conservative has a whole different meaning from political conservative or actual conservatism when it comes to politics and government, since social conservative = keeping society as it is.

[SmartGuy4today]

If you are trying to maintain political stability in a political argument, which is how conservative is defined in a true political context, then it changes from being about keeping things as they are to being about keeping the political stability of the country as it is. Maintaining stability is what conservative is about, not keeping wealthy people wealthy, but preventing discord and conflict between people who argue against one another.

In other words, true conservatism = political moderate

[SmartGuy4today]

What is the true nature of politics?

Behavior, riffraff, not just making changes, but arguing for how change should implement. All of that is politics and the essence of what really is government.

If you tie conservative to that, then conservative has a completely different meaning from how we express it. It is about holding back the politics or behavior and the immediate decision making decisions in government. Yeah that still sounds quite similar to a status quo, but I will say other wise.

[SmartGuy4today]

The actual definition of conservatism and progressive stem from their etymology and conservatism is nothing about the status quo. Yes your defintion of progressive is accurate, but not your definition of conservative. See the word conservative has been altered and fucked around with so much that no one knows what originally meant.

Conservative comes from the word "conservare" which means to retain, save, or keep.

People get confused, because they don't put it into political context.

[JoKo203]

It's ridiculous how many right-wingers advocate the message of Christ and Judeo-Christian values, yet, they fail to connect the dots. Christ's message - Redistribution of wealth (Matthew 19: 21-24), Charity (Deuteronomy 15:7) Meekness (Psalms 37:11, Proverbs, 3:34, Matthew 5:5) etc.. Does any of this sound like Rush Limbaugh? I don't get it, where do hardcore right-wing conservative talk show hosts have the right to tell Liberals that THEY are the enemy of "Judeo-Christian Values?"

[TheForwardGaze]

Conservatives no longer want to conserve the staus quo but to turn back the clock to the 1950s for some or back to the 19th century for others.

Progressive change has come very slowly for America over a period of 200 years. It doesn't happen quickly. Gay rights has been slowly gaining ground for 40 years now.

[ljhop]

@Tbone282

Banning Stem Cell research, gay marriage, diverting tax dollars to church groups, etc. Faith-based initiatives erode the seperation of church and state. What if Muslims became the 51% majority in one state and started passing faith based initiatives?