Politcal Labels Part II

I did manage to take some notes from the lecture on Political Labels.  One of my notes showed a sort of diagram that stated Conservative = pinnacle.  Liberal = progression.  I think what I meant when I wrote this is that within a lot of conservative strains that I read, conservatives believe that we have either reached the pinnacle of history or that we have already reached it and must work hard to go back to it.  One example can be found within evolution.  Many anti-evolution advocates believe that humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creation.  It doesn’t get any better than this.  Animals may or may not evolve, but they will never reach the excellence of humanity because God doesn’t want them to.   Liberals believe that evolution is a process.  Humans, too, will change give enough time or climate changes.  We have discovered that we have “dark DNA” — DNA that can be switched on or off given the right circumstances.  In the liberal’s world, humanity is quite capable of destroying everything and is already in the process of doing so.Capitalism can be seen this way, too.  In conservative thought, the free market is the pinnacle of all economics.  Nothing better will ever come along and nothing better could ever exist.  Any inefficiencies within the system can be explained by the market not being free enough, no matter pervasive human tampering with the system.  Any more, the democrats seem to be indistinguishable from the Republicans in this regard.  Both sides want to squeeze as much as they can from the economy as possible.  The difference comes with non-political liberals.  These liberals believe that capitalism, as practiced now works, but is in the process of working better.  Humanity, and earth, needs to develop a better system, one that takes care of our neighbors and respects the environment.

But the above argument seems to have switched places with classic conservatism and classic liberalism.  Today’s conservatives believe that this man-made idea, capitalism, can magically solve any problem if left alone, while today’s liberals believe that a little more finger-in-the-pot is necessary to make sure we don’t suddenly wake up in a hand-basket.

 However, one of the things the lecturer admitted over and over again, is that he’s not sure exactly what today’s liberals and conservatives stand for.    I’ll share some more of my thoughts about this in part three.

Do You Have a Permit for That?

Recently, scientists documents Chimpanzees sharpening sticks to go hunting little furries. This flies in the face of everything I had been taught about the uniqueness of humans. Humans were unique because of our intellect, more than any other physical characteristic. But it seems that the more we study animals, the more we find that we are not the only intelligent creatures or even the pinnacle of creation, but that we were the first to develope tools, weapons, and other “human” things.