En Tequila Es Verdad/progressive conservatism/post/2009/05/08/0521

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May 8, 2009 5:21 AM - Mike
Mike at The Big Stick said...

Prompted by Specter's defection I've been doing a lot of thinking about so-called moderates or Centrists and their place in the political landscape. Both seem to be codewords for 'someone inclined to vote with the other side on one or more major issue'. So when we're talking about a 'moderate Republican' who votes with the Left 50% of the time...I think the person needs to be honest with himself and become an Independent. For the rest of us that side with the Right (or Left) 80% of the time then I think we can claim the title of conservative or liberal with justification. But even within those ranks there are different types of conservatives and liberals. There are Religious Conservatives, Fiscal Conservatives and what I will call 'Static Conservatives' which are folks who have an irrational fear of progress or the future. They are the ones that picture Leave it to Beaver as the high point of human culture. There are also conservatives like myself who I would call progressive because they don't fear the future and they are happy to help guide human progress. We just want to see it happen within a conservative framework which means some patience and some looking before we leap. For example, global warming; I think most intelligent and free thinking conservatives will say that they believe man is impacting the planet in a negative way with emissions and pollution. We are even willing to accept the premise that it is causing global warming. Where our conservatism kicks in is where we are cautious about undertaking very expensive reforms to fight a problem that a lot of climate scientists admit we don't have a full grasp of. As for deciding what traditions to honor and uphold, I guess what i would say is that we approach the world withthe attitude that not everything is broke and not everything needs liberal re-invention.

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