The Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

I hesitate to place people in groups because I think there is more that unites us than divides us. The media and politicians are eager to pigeonhole all of us into one group or another and set us against each other in order to get votes, power, and money, and it’s easier to do that when you have someone you can blame for all the problems in the world and then present yourself as the solution. Despite this, I think most people in the US and around the world believe in the same things, want the same things, and are afraid of the same things, but we disagree on how to get the good stuff and stay away from the bad stuff.

For example, nobody wants more crime. Liberals don’t want more crime, and conservatives don’t want more crime. Well, now I’m already questioning myself. I think there might be two groups of people interested in actively creating more crime; the mafia and politicians. After all, the more crime there is, the more they benefit. The first because crime is their business, and the second because, as I said in the first paragraph, without crime it would be harder to get votes. But when I say “nobody wants more crime” I’m talking about normal people, not politicians or the mafia. Normal people with normal jobs doing normal things. 99% of the population does not want more crime.

Where liberals and conservatives disagree is when it comes to “how” you get rid of crime. The liberal might say that less guns = less violent crime because if a criminal can’t get a gun then they can’t shoot anyone. The conservative would claim that anyone who wants a gun can get one whether they’re illegal or not, and the way to battle crime is to get more people owning more guns so that criminals are afraid to commit crimes for fear of being shot by a law-abiding, gun-wielding granny. But we’re not here to talk about guns, this is just an example of how we both want the same end result–less violent crime–but we differ on what we think the best way is to get there.

I believe the primary factor leading to these types of differences in opinion comes down to one thing–long-term vs. short-term. That is, liberals want to fix things immediately, and conservatives want to fix things permanently. Liberals want to fix things immediately because they’re emotionally involved and are looking on the surface, and conservatives want to fix things in a different way because they’re looking at what will work in the long-term and they’re looking below the surface in order to figure out what will truly provide the desired effect.

To give another example, one thing both liberals and conservatives want is less poverty (again, we’re talking about normal people, not politicians, some of whom benefit from certain groups being poor). You’ve heard the saying “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” The way I see it liberals give people fish, and conservatives teach people to fish. It is much easier and faster to give a man a fish as opposed to teaching him to fish, but the problem is that if you give a man a fish one day, you have to do it again the next day. Eventually the man starts feeling like he deserves the fish whether he does anything for it or not, and that’s essentially what happens with welfare programs. The recipient ends up becoming something of a slave.

As horrible as it is to coerce someone to perform a physical labor, terrorize them, torture them, rape their women, kill their men, and steal their children, there is something at the core of a human being that can resist all that and not just survive, but thrive (read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl wherein he describes his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp and his reaction to it). But the same person who resists torture and emerges stronger because of it can be destroyed by a misguided sense of pity manifest in the form of government-financed welfare programs. In one situation a man is treated like an animal but can still emerge a man, but in the other he risks being turned into an animal. If you teach a man to fish, you might make a larger initial investment of time and effort, but then the man becomes independent, self-sufficient, has self-respect, and a true human being rather than an animal.

Where conservatives go wrong, perhaps, is in becoming so focused on teaching men to fish that they disregard the idea that they might need a fish or two to make it long enough to learn how to fish. If it takes a month for a man to learn how to “fish” then it’s no good to start teaching him to fish if he’s going to starve in the meantime.

But once liberals and conservatives understand where they’re different they should put those differences aside and focus on where they agree and get things done in those areas. Otherwise we get locked in arguments and people end up only getting fish, or only getting taught how to fish when they really need a few fish, or people get no fish and no classes on how to catch fish.