Re: What is a Conservative?

"While I suppose that many here may not remember it, the spread of communism was due, in large part, to rampant and uncontained liberal thought. One could argue that the half-century-long Cold War that threatened to destroy the entire world on multiple occasions was created primarily because of an overreaction on the part of liberal factions within nations who believed communism would lead them to utopia."

Yes, socialism and communism were reactions to the horrible inequality that resulted from power-hungry monarchs, often in collaboration with religious leaders, ruling Europe for centuries and constantly waging war on one another. People who are oppressed and who desire liberty always yearn for political solutions to their plight. And sometimes there is an overreaction - understandable, when the oppression becomes unbearable.

In America, there was a period from the 1920s to the early 1930s when it seemed possible that some type of totalitarian dictatorship, either communist or fascist, might replace representative democracy as our form of government. Some liberals fell in love with the Russian Revolution and thought that Communism was the only way for America to truly live up to its motto, that all men were created equal. Others, however, saw that any kind of totalitarian regime was capable of becoming just as tyrannical as the worst God-ordained monarchy. Fortunately, we elected FDR president and he was able to do just enough (in spite of nearly constant opposition from conservatives and Republicans) to help save not only democracy but capitalism itself.

Once the excesses of Stalinist Russia became evident, most American liberals became virulently anti-Communist. The 60's radicals condemned liberals for being too mainstream, and not interested enough in things like racial equality and women's rights, and being too interested in military adventures overseas. Liberals were the status quo. It took the painful lessons of Vietnam, and the struggle to attain equality by African Americans, to create the modern-day liberal, someone who believes in what America stands for
(regardless of what extremists like Michelle Bachman say) and, more importantly, what America is capable of becoming.

And that's pretty much where liberalism stands today - for liberty, against totalitarianism (whether of the left or the right), and for free markets tempered by an appropriate amount of government regulation, and a safety net for the truly needy. And, of course, an appropriate amount of taxation to pay for schools, roads, bridges and tunnels, hospitals, fire and police departments, and all those other wonderful things that everyone loves so much but no one wants to pay for. It really amuses me when people on this forum (not you, DQ) conflate liberalism, communism and socialism, as if they're all the same, with no distinction or difference between them. I'm no communist, or socialist, but as far as I can tell liberalism is the best hope we have right now of getting out of the mess that we've gotten ourselves into, not just in this country, but in the world.