Jacob Streacker's [url=/Articles/Opinion/Your%20Turn/2008/05/20/24628/]letter[/url] in The Post today is an indictment ofclose-minded liberals on OU's campus who Steacker believes use the same hypocritical generalizations and exploitation of power I came tohate the conservatives in my hometown that is sure to inspire anunhealthy 20 comment rant over the next day or so.
I don't really understand the obsession with having to categorizepeople into one of the two groups: liberal or conservative. Here is agame to play. Think of the best possible definition of the words conservative and liberal, and see how many of the people you label assuch would agree that it is an accurate characterization of theirbeliefs. I have a hunch the number wouldn't be very big.
In reality the terms conservative and liberal really aren't thatspecific or even very well defined. Roughly I would say to be liberalis to be more optimistic about the ability of government to createpositive social change and to be conservative is to be less optimisticabout government's abilities.
People obsess over how flat-out wrong liberals or conservatives are.But the process is grossly self-serving. In my experience those whorant and rave about conservatives choose to focus on thoseconservatives that are the most obviously deplorable. The same istrue for those who go after liberals.
People usually declare themselves as a liberal or conservative based onthe best examples from those categories. Unfortunately once thatdeclaration is made, they are written off as an idiot and an assholebased on the most egregious personas and ideologies by the opposingteam.
Politics would be a lot more constructive, and frankly more interesting, ifpeople stopped approaching it as some sort of Lord of the Rings battleof good vs. evil and started debating on the level of individualproblems and ideas.
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Graham Bowman
