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The thing that progressivism has gotten wrong is that tradition isn't completely arbitrary and lacking in utility. The thing that conservatism has gotten wrong
by ralusek 4y ago
The thing that progressivism has gotten wrong is that tradition isn't completely arbitrary and lacking in utility. The thing that conservatism has gotten wrong is that tradition isn't simply defensible for its own sake.
Modern progressivism feels like going into a house to remodel, with a sledgehammer, without bothering to give any consideration to which walls might be load bearing. Conservatism feels like keeping a claustrophobic ugly kitchen in lieu of an open floorplan, simply because the walls should be assumed to be load bearing.
- ralusek 4y agoTo bring this out of the abstract, take something like feminism. First wave had it right, in my opinion, by focusing on liberation. Women weren't free to choose their own paths, and conservatism was the over bearing force in creating this problem. The aim of liberation was to free what arbitrary constraints were put on women simply due to tradition or presumption. Modern feminism, however, focuses on equality rather than liberation. It feels comfortable to assert that if women were truly liberated, they would be equal, and would be equally represented as software engineers, and plumbers, and truck drivers, etc. This is, in contrast, a failure of progressivism. It assumes that no traditions or gender roles had any basis in preferences that need not be equally distributed between sexes. TL;DR Virtue of the Mean every time
- orwin 4y agoModern feminism (philosophical, postmodern) focus on emancipation. That political feminism (liberal, capitalist) chose to focus on equality isn't for progressive reasons, but for growth.