Focused Link: On Being Neither Liberal nor Conservative
I've come across an article that tries in some way to put some light into the categories of conservatives and liberals. This was published a couple of weeks earlier than my commentary, but somehow, they seem to reinforce each other.
The link:
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0133.html
Below is an excerpt.
*~*~*~*~*
Most social coercion today seems to come from those called liberal/left, not from those called conservatives, who are pretty "liberal" by comparison to self-designated "liberals." But then social coercion has always been a trademark of the left, which is overly anxious to improve things in this world, as, in their view, there is no other world or no other way to accomplish any improvement. So we find a certain impatience and restlessness in their agenda. The spiritual origins of totalitarianism are often found in a certain impatience at the slowness of the world to become what the ideologies tell us it ought to become.
Take, for example, the word "primitive." All through the Reformation there were Christians who wanted to return to the "primitive" Church as if all that happened since the founding of the Faith was a deviation from some set standard of practice that ought never to have developed or been further clarified. Yet the word "primitive" can have a very different kind of meaning.
Tertullian (d. 225 A.D.), for instance, was concerned with heresies. He wanted to find out what the various churches of his time (all Catholic, to be sure) had in common. "Every family has to be traced back to its origins," Tertullian said. "That is why we can say that all these great churches constitute that one original Church of the apostles; for it is from them that they all come. They are all primitive, all apostolic, because they are all one.... The principle on which these associations are based is common tradition by which they share the same sacramental bond." So here we see that we should be neither liberal or conservative, but "primitive," that is, we should know and preserve what was handed down.
Take another set of oft-heard words — "radical" or "revolutionary," for instance. Or take "dogmatic" or "reactionary." The first thing we need to notice is that each of these words has something fluid about it. What was once considered to be "liberal" can come to be called "reactionary." How so? Take, for instance, the Muslim practice of having four wives. In context, this precept should rather be stated, "having only four wives." It was a "conservative" standard. For this limit was originally conceived as a restriction — four, not ten or twenty. Who is more "liberal," the man with four wives or the one with ten? In this context, the really "radical" or "revolutionary" man is the one with only one wife. He is the one defying the culture. Yet, in a society of widespread divorce and infidelity, having only one wife is "conservative," if not down right primitive or reactionary, except for the fact that primitives never seem to have evolved the one wife theory. That came from Christianity, though it was in the logic of marriage itself.
The link:
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0133.html
Below is an excerpt.
*~*~*~*~*
Most social coercion today seems to come from those called liberal/left, not from those called conservatives, who are pretty "liberal" by comparison to self-designated "liberals." But then social coercion has always been a trademark of the left, which is overly anxious to improve things in this world, as, in their view, there is no other world or no other way to accomplish any improvement. So we find a certain impatience and restlessness in their agenda. The spiritual origins of totalitarianism are often found in a certain impatience at the slowness of the world to become what the ideologies tell us it ought to become.
Take, for example, the word "primitive." All through the Reformation there were Christians who wanted to return to the "primitive" Church as if all that happened since the founding of the Faith was a deviation from some set standard of practice that ought never to have developed or been further clarified. Yet the word "primitive" can have a very different kind of meaning.
Tertullian (d. 225 A.D.), for instance, was concerned with heresies. He wanted to find out what the various churches of his time (all Catholic, to be sure) had in common. "Every family has to be traced back to its origins," Tertullian said. "That is why we can say that all these great churches constitute that one original Church of the apostles; for it is from them that they all come. They are all primitive, all apostolic, because they are all one.... The principle on which these associations are based is common tradition by which they share the same sacramental bond." So here we see that we should be neither liberal or conservative, but "primitive," that is, we should know and preserve what was handed down.
Take another set of oft-heard words — "radical" or "revolutionary," for instance. Or take "dogmatic" or "reactionary." The first thing we need to notice is that each of these words has something fluid about it. What was once considered to be "liberal" can come to be called "reactionary." How so? Take, for instance, the Muslim practice of having four wives. In context, this precept should rather be stated, "having only four wives." It was a "conservative" standard. For this limit was originally conceived as a restriction — four, not ten or twenty. Who is more "liberal," the man with four wives or the one with ten? In this context, the really "radical" or "revolutionary" man is the one with only one wife. He is the one defying the culture. Yet, in a society of widespread divorce and infidelity, having only one wife is "conservative," if not down right primitive or reactionary, except for the fact that primitives never seem to have evolved the one wife theory. That came from Christianity, though it was in the logic of marriage itself.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
3:45 PM
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