I may or may not have covered this in the past, and I know I've been hinting at this for a while now in some of my recent posts, but it really is hammering home for me given how much I've been reading, writing, and introspecting lately. Liberalism really does have an old book problem, and it really is a conservative ideology.
One thing I noticed when I focused on the presidential election thing over time, is how being in the 21st century, I was afforded a certain level of clarity and understanding of the overall historical trends that people were mostly not aware of at the time. There have always been small minorities of people with politics ahead of their time, such as labor reformers, abolitionists, etc., but for the most part, 98% of the public typically centers around the mainstream. And people get highly polarized over elections, and tend to fight over mere inches on the football field of left/right politics, freaking out over relatively minor differences while ignoring where the ideological consensuses are. And often times, to us, these past eras of politics look highly dysfunctional. No one until the republicans replaced the whigs took the slavery issue seriously in the mainstream. No one until FDR seemed to seriously tackle labor issues. For as much as liberals today love to circlejerk about the virtues of pragmatism and incrementalism, they seem to be proven wrong time and time again by my estimation of American history. Real change in America comes not from preserving the status quo and fiddling about the edges, but from people who represent a significant change in ideology and who propose entire new systems of thought. To some extent, you need to be unhappy with the status quo to really change things. You might even need to think the way we've been doing things up until now is totally immoral. It wasn't the people who accepted the political reality of slavery who ended it, but people who believed it was fundamentally unjust, and unapologetically believed all people were created equal. It wasn't the people who accepted the political reality of the gilded age who changed it, but people like FDR who agreed that we could not continue as we were and tried to change course.
Likewise, I'm going to be honest. I have a fundamental moral distaste with how modern capitalism functions. As I expressed the other day, I literally view wage labor in this system as slavery, and I really think all modern liberalism has done is soften the blow of these labor relations, rather than solve the problem. I think stepping back, and looking at things through a more objective lens of history, that our current behaviors and practices will be regarded by future generations as barbaric.
Yet modern liberals seem unbothered by this. The Sanders movement at least sees some aspects of the problem, but even they tend to be too stuck on past philosophies. Still, they at least see some level of inherent injustice in the system. Mainstream liberals seem to be happy with the status quo. Their idea of changes are incremental, and they believe more minor band aid fixes are all we need. Their most radical ideas are in the fields of race and gender relations in trying to advocate for more equality between the sexes and races in terms of job advancement, which is kind of pathetic as that's really just picking winners and losers within a broken system rather than fixing said system. Liberals believe most of the problems we needed to solve have been solved, the system is good as it is, and that little change is needed. They are, effectively, conservatives. They want to conserve current institutions and act as a bulwark against change.
So where does that leave actual conservatives? They're regressives. While liberalism at least is satisfied to revel in its 20th century accomplishments, conservatives are still stuck in the 18th century and the enlightenment era. Their views are based on John Locke and the founding fathers and think most change in the past 200 years has been for the worse. They want to go back to a mythical version of the past that never really existed. They are an inherently dangerous and regressive ideology. They don't want to conserve anything, they want to tear things down.
As someone who is actually progressive, as in, believes in societal progress, politics frustrates me, and I find myself on the margins, being part of that 1% of people who actually seem to be decades, if not centuries ahead of their time. I saw some liberals discussing a topic today wondering if, in the long term, they're regressive like the right is too, and many of them seemed to not think so. Well, let me just say this, yeah, they are. I already think their systems are dated and horrifying. I mean, they were good for 50-100 years ago. But we need a new approach for the next 50-100 years. And that means overhauling crap and moving things forward.
Will even my ideas be regressive one day? Sure. And that's okay. As I have said previously, I'm only thinking ahead by maybe 50 years or so. Someone who reads this more than 100 years in the future might see the same problems with my ideas as I have with those of 100 years ago. Times change, conditions change, and morality has to evolve with it. I don't necessarily agree all change is progress, I mean, it is possible to go backwards. But I do believe that western history has, generally, gone forward over the past 1000 years or so. And barring some really negative cultural shifts, like say, cultural hegemonic domination by a regressive dictatorial power like China, or a climate or energy crisis that destroys our capacity to progress toward the future, I generally do think we will continue to improve. And one day we will have a situation where even my advanced ethics don't work. In 1880, modern liberalism was extremely cutting edge and progressive beyond its time. In 1950 it was mainstream. In 2021, it is starting to feel dated. It doesn't help that liberals themselves have regressed from the aggressive stances they held during the new deal era. That's another reason why they're conservative. They've shifted from being change agents to merely defending their ideology's previous accomplishments. That's the textbook definition of regressive. Even Nixon was often more progressive than democrats today are at times. I mean the dude was for basic income after all.
The point is, mainstream liberals and democrats are not as progressive as they like to act like. They've long since sold out on actual progressivism and have shifted toward merely defending past accomplishments and proposing minor tweaks to society. They're the new conservatives, and republicans are, by comparison, horridly regressive and wanting to go backwards. Progress involves changing things in a forward facing way. And while liberals often do this in very mild incremental ways here and there, that very incrementalism holds them back from being able to accomplish anything significant. I'm going to say that I find their entire political system as outdated, and I believe their failure to change things for the better will eventually be looked upon negatively by history. It might take 50-100 years for people to admit it, but honestly, based on past trends, I'm willing to bet I will be vindicated somewhat in the long term. i dont know if my exact visions for things will ever pan out, but I believe the issues of today will be addressed in some ways eventually. And then we will look upon the past and wonder how we ever lived this way in the first place.
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