I, and I bet many others, find the terms "conservative" and "liberal" nowadays to be extremely loaded. Calling someone a "liberal" makes me feel like a balding Fox News anchor dismissing someone's opinion because they have a nose piercing, and I'm physically incapable of calling someone a "conservative" without feeling like I have to whisper it like a secret. The country is too politically charged to use these titles casually and without massive reputational risk. And it's pretty annoying.
But at one point a few years ago, I remember asking myself, "If I had to distill being a 'liberal' and a 'conservative' down to their most basic elements as if I had to explain it to a five-year-old, what would I say?"
And I think the one-sentence summary is pretty straight-forward and easy to agree on: conservatives value freedom over equality, and liberals value equality over freedom. It's not that simple, but it's kind of that simple.
But that definition didn't feel complete to me. It explained the most important pillar in how both sides make decisions, but it didn't seem to really explain how each side acts on a day-to-day basis.
And so I thought about it a bit more and came up with this. Both conservatives and liberals acknowledge that there are good parts of America and that there are bad parts of America. But conservatives cherish the good parts so much that they have trouble clearly seeing the bad parts, and liberals are so fixated on the bad parts that they have trouble fully appreciating the good parts.
And I liked that. It seemed to put each side in a more understanding light. It has been something I consistently come back to in my head whenever politics devolves into a verbal food fight.
The two sides aren't so different after all. They're just looking at different halves of the same country.
Comments