In light of my previous post about the
awakening of a Leftist mind to the hypocrisy of the Left's ideology, I thought it would be a good idea to link to
Assistant Village Idiot's e-mail debate with his uncle on the differences between conservatives and liberals.
Liberalism is a religion. Conservatism is a culture. You might choose different terms for the distinction I am making, but there is a qualitative difference in how they go wrong. Conservatives are notorious for mixing God, Country, Military, and Tradition, being unable to even perceive that these might be at odds in America at times. Liberals are notorious for thinking that their values are simply Right, and that Jesus, Moses, Buddha, and Whoever taught those things, or would have if they had the benefit of modern wisdom. (Alternatively, some liberals believe that those worthies were All Wrong, but we've got it right now, and those who disagree are some sort of phobe or bigot.)
I have seen both sides of this myself, though I must agree with one commenter who responded with:
While this [ - mixing God, Country, Military, and Tradition - ] may be true of some self-described conservatives and may be the general perception of non-conservatives it is at variance with the beliefs and inclinations of philosophical conservatives.
AVI does a pretty good job of delving into both the misconceptions liberals have of conservatives, but of the depth of the willful ignorance many on the Left embrace and the hard road those who end up leaving liberalism behind face.
This is why leaving liberalism is always a personal journey that requires painful self-observation. It is not a set of intellectual principles, but a religious faith. It is impossible to leave liberalism without personal struggle.
We certainly saw that in Danusha Goska's self-described journey from lock-step Leftism to free-thinking adult. Others that have made the same journey have also described how many of their deeply ingrained beliefs they had to leave behind in order to start seeing the world the way it is rather than the way the Left portrays it, to unlearn knee-jerk emotional reactions and to start really looking at what was happening and making up their own minds about what they observed.
