Liberal vs. Conservative Is a Nonsensical Apples-to-Oranges Comparison — Part I

Everyday we hear liberal vs. conservative comparisons, as if they are two choices within a comparable category. They are not.

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law.

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy promoting traditional social institutions.

While liberalism does not inherently have anything to do with change, conservatism does. Conservatism has to do with not changing. So the battle lines usually get drawn around change, even though changing or not changing is not an inherent feature of liberalism.

So for example, liberals currently favor leaving public lands in the public domain while “conservatives” favor selling public lands to oil and gas interests. Since this conservative position involves change, it is often reframed by conservatives as fighting some supposed previous change allegedly enacted by liberals. But there is nothing about the history of public land trusts that are liberal. Holding public lands were originally a bipartisan if not conservative position.

Conservatism is by definition about preserving the past. Liberalism can be just as much about conserving and preserving, especially the environment. But admittedly, conservative “conservatism” is about preserving institutions, somehow not nature.

Liberalism is about allowing or permitting as much personal freedom as is possible. One can make the case that these personal freedoms are a “past institution” or state of nature that liberals seek to preserve from our past.

In this way liberals are framed by conservatives as being about change for the sake of change. But such framing is simply a convenient way to draw one’s opponent into a straw man argument. It is easier to defeat an opponent if one can draw them into the argument directly opposite your own.

Liberals consistently take this bate from conservatives.

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Part II: Liberal vs. Conservative Is a Nonsensical Apples-to-Oranges Comparison — Part II