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Your statement makes no sense. To begin with, the terms "objective" and "relative" are not antonyms. A definition can be both, neither, or either one of the tw

Your statement makes no sense. To begin with, the terms "objective" and "relative" are not antonyms. A definition can be both, neither, or either one of the two. And the terms "progressive" and "conservative" in particular describe attitudes towards the status quo and traditional institutions, which means that whatever exact position a progressive or conservative person takes on an issue will depend on context. By their very definition, the meaning of these words is bound to a particular point in time. As an example: anyone not on the extreme fringes of the political spectrum will agree with at least the broad strokes of the universal declaration of human rights today, but the adoption of a similar document [1] in revolutionary France was a highly contentious act that directly attacked millennia of institutional power (that is, the divine right of kings). Conservatives at the time fought this tooth and nail and sought to restore the old institutional power. But most conservatives today would for the most part support this text. In the short term, the Revolution didn't succeed, but on the long term they "won", their ideology largely got adopted and supplanted the old feudal ideology: the Revolutionary ideals are now the status quo in many countries, which many conservatives will defend (support for absolute monarchy is thinly spread even among conservatives today). Nevertheless, it would be deeply absurd to call the French revolutionaries conservatives. In fact, the usage of the terms "left" (supporters of the revolution) and "right" (loyalists to the monarchy) to denote political positions originates from this time. So yes, at the time, the positions of the French Revolution were progressive, even though the Revolutionaries weren't progressive by today's standards (in particular with regards to women). These terms are fundamentally relative, to try to give them an absolute meaning is simply to not understand them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_M...

throwaway4aday 4y ago
So you're arguing that the conservatives at the time failed to conserve their traditional values resulting in their spiritual successors being more liberal. Which in the case of the traditional value of having large families resulted in the demographic decline that is the topic of the article. This seems to clearly support OPs argument that conservative societies will be more successful as long as the values they are conserving are beneficial to the individuals comprising those societies and they succeed in conserving them.
- ookdatnog 4y ago
  That's not at all what I'm arguing. My comment was purely a response to > I think we need an objective rather than a relative definition if we're going to do anything other than move goalposts. I claimed that this is a nonsensical statement for two reasons: 1. You imply that relativity and objectivity are at odds (they aren't -- "I'm taller than my mom" is both a relative and an objective statement). 2. You claim that in order to have a meaningful conversation about conservatism and progressivism, these terms must be defined in an absolute sense. But they are by definition relative. Most of my comment illustrates this point.

throwaway4aday 4y ago

So you're arguing that the conservatives at the time failed to conserve their traditional values resulting in their spiritual successors being more liberal. Which in the case of the traditional value of having large families resulted in the demographic decline that is the topic of the article. This seems to clearly support OPs argument that conservative societies will be more successful as long as the values they are conserving are beneficial to the individuals comprising those societies and they succeed in conserving them.

ookdatnog 4y ago
That's not at all what I'm arguing. My comment was purely a response to > I think we need an objective rather than a relative definition if we're going to do anything other than move goalposts. I claimed that this is a nonsensical statement for two reasons: 1. You imply that relativity and objectivity are at odds (they aren't -- "I'm taller than my mom" is both a relative and an objective statement). 2. You claim that in order to have a meaningful conversation about conservatism and progressivism, these terms must be defined in an absolute sense. But they are by definition relative. Most of my comment illustrates this point.