Maybe We Should Talk

Language, like everything else, is both our glory, and our betrayal.
Without language, life would be something like birds that cannot sing,
perhaps even a meadow of flowers, but nothing as fascinating
and fulfilling as language.  "This is what I am thinking. . . ."!

At the same time, we do have charlatans, and manipulators,
Ponzi promisers, and politicians, and other snakes in the Garden.
Sometimes it is just that usage changes, and clarity falters,
and then we start to say things that get us all tangled up.

Consider, for instance, our political discourse!  Once upon a time,
a conservative was a person who was reluctant to try something
new, possibly because change was uncertain, or because what
already is in place serves the conservative quite well:  why change?

There were, and always are, people who think we can do better.
They want to give something new a try, maybe because it looks
promising, or maybe because what already is in place is painful.

Just saying that some people want to keep things pretty much
as they are, and others want to try something different.
Politically we say those are conservatives and liberals,
but that is a confusion.  We ought to say that some people
are conservative, and others are progressive.

Again, in any human group, there is a tension between people
who want to control or regulate the behavior of other people,
and those who think it is better to allow for more diversity.
There is a very good name for the latter:  liberal.  To be liberal,
politically or socially, is to argue for liberty; to be relatively
free from too much enforced conformity.  For example, liberals
say people should be free to decide for themselves whether
of not to drink alcohol, or that women should be free to control
their own bodies, or that marriage does not necessarily demand
two people trying to populate the earth and subdue it.

We should call the ends of that continuum of opinion 

"liberal" and "social conformists" (or some such thing).
Extreme liberals are libertarians.  Extreme conformists
are totalitarian, wanting to control what others read, what
they do in their bedrooms, or someone else's bedroom,
and whether or not you can smoke cigarettes, if you
have a fierce urge to cough, or whether the missionary
position (man on top), during intercourse, should be required.

It is a continuum.  It is not the case, in real life (although it
might be so in politics) that we are all either way over there,
or all here on this side (where the chosen people are).
"We are maybe here, maybe, at least on this issue."

To be a Republican, or a Democrat, is not so simple as being
conservative, or liberal, or progressive, or a social regulator.
Mostly, Republicans are conservative and, mostly, Democrats
are liberal.  But not all Democrats are progressive, and not all
Republicans want to regulate who marries whom, or why.

We are almost at a standoff politically. 

It is as if rival religious groups, 

speaking two different languages,

were intent, each, on overrunning the other.

Maybe we should put our guns down, and quit speaking of "crosshairs",
and "crusades", and "battles" and "wars" on everything", and quit talking
as if all conservatives were money-mongers and progressives were trying
to destroy the Constitution, as if liberals were immoral and people
who want to order society more strictly were social fascists.

There are differences, and the differences are important,
but they are not simple bi-polar choices.  We are spread out
all along a spectrum, and we change positions on different issues.

We ought to talk about that, and not just say NO!
We have the words to do that, if we think about what we say.