liberals and conservatives?

Question

What does this mean, I suspect it alludes to your political parties but which one is whitch

Answer 1

Many folks in these parts think that it would be just fine if there were no more liberals around, anywhere. They see liberals as anti-religion, anti-American, and anti-anything that they believe in. People develop these attitudes as they are brought up. They get their viewpoints from their parents, their friends, their ministers, and others in their circle of acquaintances. People develop their attitudes irrationally and, unfortunately, not with their own minds. In other words, people do not think for themselves very much.

One night many years ago, William Jennings Bryan was speaking before a crowd of mostly farmers in Omaha, Nebraska. Afterwards, a young farmer came up to Bryan and earnestly inquired. "Why did God make conservatives?"

Bryan replied with another question, "When you want to plow a field, what kind of horses do you use?" The farmer replied that he used his strongest team.

"Well," replied Bryan, "So what kind of plow would you use?" The farmer said he would use the best he had, the one that would plow the deepest and hold fast in the ground.

"Well," said Bryan, "God made strong horses and stubborn plows and that way you get your field cultivated. So God made liberals--they are the strong horses--and conservatives--they are the plow--and if the liberals pull and the conservatives hold on, the work gets done. We need both."

Today most people are quick to claim that they are "a conservative". Fewer claim to be liberals. Some call themselves "progressives", which I take to be a code word for liberal. The word liberal is spelled with four letters in the minds of many Southerners. But how many of us actually know anything about liberalism, or even conservatism, and the respective histories of these traditions? When we say that we are one or the other, what are we really saying?

Liberals and conservatives historically differ in style and in temperament; and where they differ particularly is in their attitudes toward change. "The castle which conservatism is set to defend," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is the actual state of things, good and bad." Against this view the liberal urges the wisdom and the feasibility of change in order to improve the human and social condition. The conservative supposes that human contrivance is so treacherous a guide that efforts at making things better will generally produce more grief than good. The liberal, while he does not believe in the perfect nature of man or the infallibility of reason, does contend that intelligent decisions by mankind can improve individual opportunity and security. The conservative is the traditionalist; the liberal, the experimentalist.

A society made up exclusively of conservatives or of liberals would be too dismal to contemplate. A good tension between the two camps provides fertile ground for society as a whole. "Each half is great," wrote Emerson, "but an impossible whole."

While the liberal says, "Let's get going," the conservative says, "Wait a minute," and both are essential to progress. The job of innovation is usually performed by the liberal. The job of restraint is held by the conservative. While the durability of our society can be broadly attributed to conservatives, its creativity is the main province of its liberals.

Most people, most of the time, are conservative for the same reason that they are conventional and accept and abide by the customs of their neighbors. They conceive of progress as a series of slow and relatively minor adjustments; drastic change almost always alarms them. The liberal is less patient in his search for remedies for the faults and failures he sees. He is prepared to accept change in larger doses. Both groups are always with us, and the political history of our country is mainly an account of the shifting strengths and weaknesses of these elements. From time to time great fevers of reform, as in the days of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, make us seem like a liberal country, which we are. When the process slows down, like in recent times, we appear to be a conservative country. We are that too.

Liberalism and liberals dominate the fields of science, technology, culture and education, and have for over a hundred years. There can be no doubt that the Western society of today owes to liberal thinkers a large debt of gratitude for the standard of living we now enjoy. They are the great force of progress and civilization. They make us uneasy sometimes, but the necessity of their presence cannot be denied.

So next time you read about something done or said by the ACLU or Edward Kennedy or Mrs. Clinton, instead of cussing them, just be thankful that they are free in this society to pull the plow. Without them in our midst, the field would certainly not be tilled.

"In politics the middle way is none at all." John Adams 1735-1826, Second President of the USA.

Answer 2

Liberals are people who care about other people and try to make wrongs right with the hope of making the World a better place for us all. (they also have halos around their heads).

Conservatives are people who say they care about other people but their actions don't appear that way at all. They step on less powerful people to get what they want, and mostly what they want is more tax cuts for the rich (their base), they take everything away from the lower and middle class so the rich and/or richer as well as big corporations that help to pay for their campaigns and campaigns of their friends. Perfect example of a conservative is Ann Coulter. Almost forgot, they invoke the name of "God" for any and everything that does not go their way. That worked for them for a while, but their religious base sees what they are saying and then what they are actually doing.

Answer 3

Generally people use this term to describe politics. I, however, consider it a matter of IQ. Conservatives generally hover around two standard deviations below the norm (70), giving them an IQ close to mentally challanged. "Liberals" (I use that term reluctantly, as points may be deducted for using the broad terms "Liberal" or "Conservative") or democrats generally fall one or more standard deviations above the norm (115+). Undecided people make up the mean, at around 100, or normal. It is a standard Bell Curve. Look it up.

Answer 4

Liberals typically align with the Democtatic party and Conservatives with the Republican.

In my opinion they both want to assume control of your life.

Liberals want everyone to be a ward of the state and have the government (taxpayers) supply your every need.

Republicans want to control you ... even in your own bedroom.

Answer 5

Liberals are Democrats, and conservatives are Republicans.

Answer 6

There are liberal Republicans and Conservative Democrats. Though they are in the minority/