But I Ain’t No Liberal No More
You’d think conservative would be a good term. After all, we want to conserve the earth’s precious resources right? But it turns out the conservatives have the most liberal environmental policy and the liberals the most conservative. So much for the logic of labels.
The barbershop quartet group, The Foremen, give us there take on liberal and conservative in this funny video. For those with broken sarcasm meters, trust me when I say these guys are very much on the left. Enjoy:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfnZOZ_LQcU[/youtube]
You can get the lyrics from Foreman Roy Zimmerman.
Given that the presidential primary is only six weeks away, I think we’ll hear more and more about liberals and conservatives until then.
“open up your heart and let Pat Buchanan in”–ha!!
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I agree with you about the linguistics, Steve. Before he lost his mind and started blogging exclusively about Mike Huckabee, Rod Dreher (author of Crunchy Cons) discussed issues like urbanism, sprawl and sustainability from the perspective of the Right, which was really refreshing. Sometimes I think urbanists forget that there are good Conservative reasons to believe and do what we do. Thinking Conservatives are just as concerned by loss of community and sustainability (conservation of wildlife and farmland particularly) as Thinking Liberals are. By consistently using language from one side of the political spectrum, we can insure that we will alienate a substantial number of people who are otherwise inclined to foster the changes we’d like to see.
In today’s world, there’s a big difference between a conservator, in the environmental sense, and a conservative, in the american political sense. And yes, the next year will be filled with way too much conservative versus liberal rhetoric. Until the conventions happen, the presidential candidates will continue to pander to their more-extreme “bases”, boxing themselves into unsustainable positions with the majority of more-mainstream voters. The sad result is that compromise becomes less and less attainable, and either gridlock results or “extreme” solutions are imposed by a newly-victorious, but slim, majority.
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Certainly at the federal level, and to lesser degrees at the state and local levels, the expense of mounting a campaign, both from the cost of media buys and from the ever-increasing length of the campaign “season”, has changed the fundamental concept of a citizen legislator. At every level, the need to raise money means that idealism and pragmatism both get minimized to ensure maximum cash intake – you don’t want to offend any big-money donors, and you need to carve an ever-increasing amount of time out of your schedule to do “fund raising”, be it phone calls or attending “events”.
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Personally, I struggle with wanting to elect the best person for the job with the reality of partisan politics. As the current gridlock in Washington amply illustrates, bi-partisan action seems nearly impossible if party-line votes are a condition for needed party support in the campaign. And the alternative, one party with full “control”, is equally scary, given the perceived need to “reward” the “faithful” with narrowly-focused legislation aimed more at imposing “values” on people who have somewhat different views than on protecting the health, safety and welfare of everyone.
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There are some “old-line” conservative positions that I support, things like smaller government, lower taxes, personal responsibility and keeping government out of my personal life as much as possible. There are also many “old-line” liberal positions that I support, things like diversity, equitable delivery of services and expanded personal freedoms. The challenge comes from picking from between the two mainstream parties pushing the agendas of their more-extreme members (to differentiate themselves) as being the only two options for any possible action versus voting symbolicly for “third” party candidates (Green, Libertarian, etc.) that offer interesting alternatives but knowing, even if elected, they will be totally marginalized and unable to accomplish anything! I don’t have the answer, I just grow increasingly frustrated and disconnected, accepting that gridlock and inaction may actually be better than the alternatives . . .
I was lucky enough to see Roy Zimmerman perform not once, but twice at the Skeptic conference in May of 2005 out at Caltech. Very, very funny! The second performance was unscheduled but he was brought back by popular demand.
@Jim Zavist
Disillusionment with electoral politics tends to increase the higher up you go: municipal, state, federal. This is perhaps a reflection of the extent to which large-scale campaigns are so carefully stage-managed; intelligent people know they’re just watching a circus and are understandably reluctant to buy into it. I guess this is why satire like the delightful skit above are so captivating; it skewers those campaigns’ double standards and PR machinations, and restores the healthy sense of humor needed for public discourse. Just ask Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift.