Dear steven,

I certainly lean toward the first but depressingly I think you give the majority of us too much credit.

It took a small group of Quakers to rid us of the scourge of slavery and it took a small group of Brown shirts to ferment the horrors that engulfed Europe.

I think most of us are eminently capable of swinging between both narratives and do it with such ease sometimes it is astounding.

Both these narratives that Steven describes are probably operating simultaneously throughout the world at different times and in different places.

But neither is ever permanent. History can and does turn the page completely, throughout the world, as times and centuries pass.

Thanks folks

I saw this on the Scientific American website and I was wondering how Australians would react.

>>Evolution Explains Why Politics Is So Tribal>>

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-explains-why-politics-tribal

Incidentally this is how G. K. Chesterton put it:

>>The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.>>

Conservatives and Progressives.
Stevenlmeyer,
You should have made it realistic by including the real culprits, the fence-sitters.

Steve,

I read both your narratives, and both are similar in being unrealistic extremes. To some extent it is like asking who are you closer to, the far left (Stalin) or the far right (Hitler).

Social engineering is a luxury, that is desired by a population empowered by the wealth generated from the capitalist system. The debate really lies on the fringes, where over zealous "progressives" would happily drain more and more from the capitalist cow until it runs dry (as in Greece and other EU nations) and conservatives focused on growing the cow and keeping it free of the parasites. It is notable that the real incomes of the lowest paid increased more under Howard than it did in a similar period under any Labor government.

The major problem facing governments now is that as world becomes more globalised the "cow" is more mobile and able to move to different pastures altogether.