/cont

Single motherhood likewise. I supported Whitlam when he introduced payments to such mothers on the basis that they were in need and the social stigma was old fashioned and not based on any reasonable thinking. But the result of tearing down that particular more has been to promote it as a lifestyle and condemn multiple generation to misery and social alienation.

Too many people want to tear down fences because they just don't like obstacles to their fantasies and do indeed consider the past generations as fools - that is when they even consider the past.

Conservatives oppose that thinking. They don't demand that the fence remain irrespective, but they do demand that it be retained while-ever there is uncertainty about its purpose.

Thanks mhaze- Also I think Chesterton has been mentioned before on OLO.

I found the following links interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

Chesterton's Fence and it's respect for historical knowledge is interesting in comparison to the Precautionary Principle below which I found could bias over-protection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

The principle implies that there is a social responsibility to protect the public from exposure to harm...

In some legal systems, as in law of the European Union, the application of the precautionary principle has been made a statutory requirement...

Interesting arguments.

For many people, progressive or conservative - it does
appear to be all about their ideology. For some getting
their way is more important than good policy. Some
people tend to label others because someone does not
agree with them. And, to some it is important to
demean rather than listen to their views. It's all these
reasons why many people don't take the views of these
people seriously. I don't think that all ideas are good
ideas. And just blindly labelling things does not make
them good or bad.

For years, it's conservatives who have been branded as
intolerant. But conservatives will tell us that
progressives demonstrate their own intolerance using
the strictures of political correctness as a weapon of
oppression. That became a familiar theme during the
same-sex-marriage campaign especially of people who
felt that the religious faced "a great deal of discrimination.
So, who's right?

Are conservatives more prejudiced than progressives, or vice
versa? Research over the years has shown that in industrialised
nations, social conservatives and religious fundamentalists
possess psychological traits such as the valuing of conformity
and the desire for certainty, that tend to predispose people
toward prejudice. Meanwhile progressives and the non-religious
tend to be more open to new experiences, a trait accociated
with lower prejudice.

Therefore one might expect that whatever each group's own
ideology conservatives and the religious should be inherently
more discriminatory on the whole. However more recent
psychological research, some of it presented in January last
year at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and
Social Psychology (SPSP) shows that it's not so simple.

Their findings confirm that conservatives, progressives,
the religious, and the non-religious are each prejudiced
against those with opposing views. And surprisingly each group
is about equally prejudiced. While progressives might like to
think of themselves as more open-minded, they are no more
tolerant of people unlike them than their conservative
counterparts are.

Political understanding might finally stand a chance if we could
first put aside the argument over who has that bigger problem.

The truth appears that we all do.

Mhaze,

I think it was McMahon who introduced the single mothers' benefit in 1971. Bingo - no more 'stolen children' or kids put up for adoption. Abortion rights followed fairly soo after, against the objections of all those men who wanted to be child-minders.

Dearest Foxy,

I think that both extremes crave certainty, while the world is, of course, forever going to be full of uncertainties. Democracy will always be an unfinished project, and as you said somewhere earlier this week, it demands eternal vigilance. We have to build on what is workable, not what might, in our view, be perfect.

I think I'm becoming a progressive conservative :)

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe,

That's wonderful!

I think I'm also returning to my more conservative roots.
My family couldn't be happier. (smile).

I now cringe at some of my previously held views.

"I think it was McMahon who introduced the single mothers' benefit in 1971."

You had me worried for a minute because I could vividly recall the issue at the time. Perhaps I was imagining things.

But no. The single mothers pension was introduced in 1973 (so Whitlam). Prior to that single mothers who'd previously been married got the Widow's Pension and I think McMahon had increased, or perhaps expanded, that payment in '71.

Canem Malum,

I've certainly mention Chesterton's fence previously on these pages. I mention it often elsewhere because I feel it is massively important as an aid to decision making.