The Difference Between the Left and the Right

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

The Difference between Liberals and conservatives (note the small c for the view point rather than the party) is not the one between the current Tory and the current Labour party. Whilst it may reflect it in some ways differences between the current parties and their traditional perspectives make it no longer the case. But there is still a difference in perspective that needs to be acknowledged without labeling those who take the other as bad.

I read today something from Graham (An SCMer and People and Planet person) responding to an article by some right wing columnist at the Times. Now as far as I think, both are right and wrong in some ways and Graham seems to have misunderstood or misstated the conservative

perspective. There was trotted out that old quote from Thatcher that there's no such thing as society and that Tories are anti community. That's not the case and Greg (another SCM person and also attends my Church) corrected him with the full quote from Thatcher “There is no such thing as society. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.” which shows more closely the traditional conservative prospective. It is the traditional conservative idea that we should sort ourselves out (not just helping ourselves but individually helping those around us) and not be interfered with by government or others. The Liberal perspective is that we are better when we work together and so we should plan and set out the workload accordingly.

In the snow example if one guy goes out into the street with his shovel cleans his own pavement and that of the people next to him then that is the conservative model. If a neighborhood gets together counts how many hands there are to help out and then works out so that all the pavement gets shoveled thats the Liberal model. Both have their problems, with the conservative model some pavement might get missed if not everyone wants to or is able to clean the pavement, with the liberal all that time planning and organizing they could have already cleared the pavement. But neither of these is quite fair because being Liberal or conservative isn't as much about how we interact with each other government but this gets the general idea.

Felt that I needed to write this before I inevitably start blogging more about how awful I think the Conservative party are and how everyone should vote Lib Dem or Labour (I'm still undecided on that). There are different philosophies about government and society and that is one part of the question of who you should vote for the but there is also a question of pragmatism and which parties' policies will work and do well and which ones won't. They are linked but they are definitely worth considering separately.