Circus of Values

I recently unfriended someone on Facebook. Not because of any thing they did to me specifically, but because of the political content they post on their wall with mechanical regularity. Yes, they are staunchly conservative. Yes, I consider myself "liberal" on a number of issues.

But stopping to think about the meaning of those two designators gave me pause. Recently, "conservative" and "Republican" have become interchangeable, as have "Democrat" and "Liberal". But those two parties are not strictly one sided. I am by no means the first or the last to say this, but our two party system is literally a bowl of shit looking itself in the mirror. By co-opting the terms, the parties have managed to gain followers from the all important "swing vote"or people who tend to favor votes to one side but are BY NO MEANS ENTIRELY LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE.

You can't vote in a presidential election if you're not registered as a Democrat or a Republican. But by associating with those parties, you also associate yourself with all the stereotypes and baggage inherent to your chosen party. The vocal minority becomes the standard caricature and the rest just go along with it because they agree with the majority of those beliefs. This is how you end up with one side refusing to execute a mass murderer because of "human rights"and the other side ranting about how Obama is a nazi muslim spy who wants to ship people off to internment camps. In these people's minds there is no middle ground. But the rest of us make up that middle ground. And we need to be heard again, if only to prevent the extremists of both sides from eliminating mutual diplomacy.

The meaning of the word "liberal" intends to illustrate receptiveness to new ideas, openness, wide mindedness, accepting of change. Conservative, on the other hand, invokes pragmatism, solidarity, integrity, and staunch position. Both can be good and bad. The american independence movement was made almost entirely of liberals, who were fed up with being treated like a resource and wanted to enact change. The American Indians were most certainly conservative, in that their status quo, their way of life, was under threat of massive change and they refused to accept it.

The "liberal media"is a redundant term. Media SHOULD be liberal, because media is one of the most important ways society can communicate. Communication changes, and a media that refuses to change along with society becomes repressive and obsolete. It's not hard to recognize in today's world. Institutions based on monitoring or regulation, such as the economy or environmental agencies, should tend towards conservative practices on upholding the established laws. If those laws become obsolete, or easily circumvented, then change must occur to return to a conservative baseline.

People shouldn't have to pick between two bloated, crumbling ruins to live in. You can build a dwelling that will fit you and you alone with bricks you select by hand, to fit your own beliefs.

And unless people are throwing their bricks at you, no one needs to take issue with the kind of bricks others use.