davidvoegtle.net

From the comments (who am I kidding, the comment):

chasing Says:
But even our own society isn’t necessarily “free and [tag]liberal[/tag]” – it only is when compared to those which relatively are not. [ . . . ] Just ask a 70 year old gay person, or, for that matter, an African American, or a woman who have seen that much history. But certainly back “in the day”, Americans still thought of themselves as liberal, (if not necessarily Liberal). This is why [tag]Bush[/tag] is both right and wrong about his worldview [ . . . ] People often view our history as a march towards betterment… but if we’re still on that road, and we know where it leads, why don’t we just GO there already. Enough with the journey. But we don’t really know – we just pretend to. Or hope to. And hope everyone else, eventually, agrees.

Maybe not a march, but certainly a path. We can look forward, we can look behind, and we can reflect on the present. The linearity of the flow of time means we can do little else.

The progressive looks down the road and sees, beyond the inevitable twists and turns, the ups and downs, an ultimately better place. The road never ends, but over the long term, the landscape always improves. This is really key: the road is infinite. There is no set destination, because we can always do better. We can always seek to approach closer to perfection, but never reach it.

The conservative sees the twists and turns and is . . . frightened isn’t the right word, but something like it. In any case, all those twists and turns look like a lot of work; we might be proceeding to higher ground, but that just means we’re moving uphill! He looks around and sees gnarled tree stumps and patchy grass and rocks. He looks behind and sees a familiar landscape which appears free of those things, but only because they are obscured by distance. The [tag]conservative[/tag] would just as soon return back down the path a little ways, and resettle in familiar pastures.

That’s not to say that the [tag]progressive[/tag] necessarily doesn’t blind himself to the inevitable warts of the new present. Distance works in both direction. Additionally, there really is no guarantee that the open clearing just passed wasn’t the better choice. But we keep moving because we truly can do nothing else. Time does not stand still, and neither does progress.

Both people are needed in a group traveling down the path together. The conservative keeps the group from hurtling head-long, unheeding into the unknown. Gallop a horse down a dark country road at night, and you’re likely to break your neck, the horse’s legs, or both hitting a pit or ditch or other obstacle you didn’t see.

The progressive keeps the group restless and moving forward. To force everyone to stand still in perpetuity would be just as disastrous; you can only enforce such a decree through unacceptable constraints on freedom of action.

Together the two can prevent both disaster from the unforeseen and societal stagnation. Too often though they seek not to work together as complements, but in total opposition. It is perhaps natural, since the two are pulling in opposite directions, but it doesn’t have to be so.