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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Liberals vs. Conservatives
Message-ID: <1335@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Oct-83 14:27:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1335
Posted: Wed Oct 26 14:27:05 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Oct-83 14:54:26 EDT
References: ihuxw.535, <2031@utah-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 57

From Stan the Lep Hacker:

	>From personal experience, I find that the TV portrayal seems accurate
	(TV accurate? must be something wrong).  Conservatives *do* tend to be
	narrow-minded, paranoid, etc.  Some of those things are just part of
	being conservative - of course, the conservatives use different words
	to describe the same attitudes.  
	My personal inclination is to veiw conservatism as resistance to new
	things and reluctance to change, which is (literally!) subhuman
	behavior.

What we have hear is the acknowledgement that some people are narrow-minded 
and paranoid. I agree. But why call these people conservative? I know
some people who consider themselves prime examples of liberals -- they
are fighting for women to have the right to have an abortion, which is
one of the things which is being opposed by the "conservatives" -- whoever
they are. Yet some of these people cannot believe that some women may not
want to have an abortion, not because they have been brainwashed by the
Catholic Church or the Right-to-Lifers, but because they actually think
that an abortion is wrong. And some of these people are on the lookout
for spies that might get the records of people they are counselling and
go out and preach abortion is wrong to them -- they are literally looking
for Catholic right-to-lifer's behind every bush. Seems to me that the 
conservatives have not cornered the market on either of those traits.

What I think that this means is that if you want change and find that
someone does not want it, you get insensed and call him narrow-minded.
If he gets worried that you might do something to him in order to
further your ends, you call him paranoid. And now that conservative
is a dirty word, you can call him that as well. 

I must say the word is getting over-used, for everyone is somebody's
idea of a conservative. A few weeks ago I was getting hate mail from
people who read net.women who were calling me a conservative for not
supporting their language reforms, and at the same time net.flame readers
were calling me everything from a "fascist commie bastard" to a
"damned irresposible bleeding heart liberal". okay folks -- what am I?

Maybe we should set up net.maledicta. I have much better and less worn
insults than those. These are getting boring. If even the NEWS MEDIA
knows them and salts their daily pronouncements with these insults it
is time we got new words. (though liberal and conservative will last
a long time in Canada, given that they are the names of our 2 largest 
government parties, which are about as different as the republicans and
the democrats, at least nationally...)

And as for resistance to change being a subhuman behaviour -- hasn't it
occurred to you that it makes a big difference what change is being
proposed? Not all change is a good idea! By that definition I am rather
happy to be subhuman -- being human strikes me as a terribly amoral
thing to be.

Laura Creighton
utcsstat!laura