As I mentioned before, I am doing some research. I hope you’re not like me and when I’m researching something whether in one of the huge research libraries or just on the Internet, I get sidetracked. I see something interesting pop up in the search results and I go off and look at it and it raises the question so I query that and see something interesting on an unrelated topic and go query that and so on until I’m totally lost. In these side trips, I always learn something whether it’s useful or not is the question – grin. Anyway, on one of my side trips, I got to wondering about the cause or causes of the political divide we have this country. It is larger than any I remember. I have learned it’s best to go back to the basics. The country is divided along just two political viewpoints, conservative and liberal. Here is Wikipedia’s definition of conservatism. “Conservatism is a political and social philosophy promoting traditional social institutions in the context of culture and civilization. The central tenets of conservatism include tradition, human imperfection, organic society, hierarchy, authority, and property rights.[1] Conservatives seek to preserve a range of institutions such as religion, parliamentary government, and property rights, with the aim of emphasizing social stability and continuity.[2] The more traditional elements—reactionaries—oppose modernism and seek a return to the way things were.” Here is Wikipedia’s definition of liberalism. “iberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law.[1][2][3] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support limited government, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), capitalism (free markets), democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.” Both these definitions were just cut and pasted from Wikipedia. I did that so you can go to Wikipedia and read the whole articles. The numbers you see point you to other articles. I should also point out that Europe has a different definition for liberalism and in this country, we would call it libertarianism. Conservatism tends to have much the same defining tenets all over the world, but there is a variation in which tenant is considered most important.
Now that we’ve slogged through the heavy academic things, let me turn to some of my observations. I remember in the past suddenly realizing that conservatism tends to be about things while liberalism tends to be about people. To me, this seemed to reflect the two sexes viewpoints of the world. There seems to be broad agreement that women are more interested in people and relationships, while men are more interested in things. As with all generalizations, there are exceptions. Some men are going to be more interested in people rather than things and vice versa some women are going to be more interested in things than people. With this thought in mind, I began to realize that the different interests between the sexes might be a fundamental cause of the viewpoints of the political viewpoints that so divide us today.
On the other hand, I realize that men and women fit perfectly together – don’t go there! Together we form a family and our proclivities for people and things make for a well-rounded family. It’s a perfect balance. That is not to say we won’t have our disagreements be they minor or major – what toppings to put on the pizza we’re ordering or how many children we want in the family. Somehow we settle these disputes without the ugly nature of the disagreements we see in the political world these days. In my many side trips, I began to see reasons for this ugly nature. One of them is provocateurs. I will discuss them in another blog as I must get to work on my writing and research, and you don’t want to read up a blog that’s as long as War and Peace. Enjoy your day.
