Conservatives and Liberals are two very different creatures indeed. I'm going to make an assumption here that mostof the posters, diarists, commenters and casual observers here are liberal/progressive mindset. I do not happen to belong to that group. I am a set in my ways conservative. More after the fold if i've got you interested.
As I said above, I am a conservative. You will no doubt notice that I did not say Republican. Neither am I a Democrat. I prefer to put someone in office that thinks and will act pretty much like I do. Unfortunately, the republicans have pretty much hijacked the conservative moniker. I am unsure who is to blame for this. The republicans bear part of the blame for sure, seeing as how they like to cloak themselves in the conservative label. Unfortunately, most republicans are as far away from conservatism as Russia is from Sarah Palins' front door, that is, alot farther than they would have us believe.
My definition of conservatism is this:
Don't bother me and I won't bother you.
By this I mean I'm generally opposed to the goverment trying to do things for people that they can better do for themselves. We're the sort of types that prefer to forge ahead on our own without any interference from anyone. Kinda like the old standard about the guy driving around the block for 2 hours refusing to ask directions. Do we make mistakes? Of course we do, but they are our mistakes. Conservatives, like myself, would much rather forge ahead and make our mistakes, hopefully, learn from them and move on. Bull headed you say? Yes, i've been described with that phrase more that once but i am a taurus after all. rather fits wouldn't you say?
Liberalism to me is this:
Can you help me find the answer to this?
Liberals, and i didn't say democrats, in my mind tend to believe in the all for one and one for all kind of thing. Whereas conservatives tend to think of self, liberals tend to think more of the group. In my opinion, and it may be a poor opinion in your eyes, liberals tend to think more with their heart. This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing until we get to the point where we lose self in lieu of the group.
Now here is the rub, just as light cannot exist without darkness, dry cannot exist without wet, good cannot exist without evil, I don't believe that conservatives can exist without liberals. Conversely, liberals wouldn't exist without conservatives. We, the conservatives, need you liberals to give heart to our proposals or we would eventually degenerate to anarchy and self above all. Liberals, on the other hand, need us conservatives to give some thought to your proposals or human society would devolve to the status of a colony of ants, thinking only of the colony, if we thought at all. And so with that, I welcome you thoughts on this. This is my first diary, probably not what you were expecting. I would like to continue to post on here if i can stimulate a genuine debate. As I said, this is my first diary and an introduction if you will. My future diaries will be on relevant issues of the day from a conservative viewpoint. If you made it this far, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for making the time to read the thoughts of a relative novice, and I would hope we could have some lively discussions in the future.