Modern
Liberals may not wish to acknowledge it but both Liberals and Conservatives
notice injustice and both are moved to disapproval when they witness it and
would prefer that it did not occur (these days it is endlessly and clamorously
brought to our attention by News outlets in many forms). What happens next,
though, is what differentiates them. To illustrate this let’s take the case of
President Assad of Syria and let’s assume he commits unjust acts such as using
chemical weapons against women and children.
The Modern Liberal reaction to this will be to demand that his tyranny
is punished at some future date in an international court of Justice thus
correcting the world with appropriate retribution and restoring it to a default
setting where justice is in good balance. The problem that the conservative
sees here is that, having somehow captured Assad, in spite of the aid given him
to resist such capture by his Iranian and Russian allies, notions of perfect
justice would require us to move on to the next tyrant (and there will be
plenty) and, from there, to more petty tyrants who reign in lesser institutions
than those of Nation States around the world, from Corporations to prisons,
school and supermarkets until they have imposed a perfect reign of justice in
the world. To ensure that no stone is left unturned, eventually, one will have
to attempt to root out the tyranny gene in each individual and even in
ourselves. It is at this point that we notice what the real problem is in this
way of thinking. It is thinking that exists on an airy platform in a notional
mental desert far from the real suboptimal world and completely untethered from
that world. It is totally and laughably impracticable when taken to its logical
conclusion. The problem with the Liberal’s thinking is that it has no
connection with reality. Of course, merely to suggest this, is to open oneself
to accusations of complacency and not noticing or caring about injustice. A
better remedy to the problem of the lack of justice in the world might be to
approach the problem in a way that turns the problem on its head. Take the
smallest unit of human reality available – yourself. Then look at the elements
of tyranny that lodge there and seek to root them out. This is a bottom up approach that reverses the top down
Liberal version that looks from the notional mental platform onto injustice in
distant foreign lands and loftily demands instant redress (it might be added
that that lofty consciousness assumes almost as a matter of course that it is totally and antiseptically uninfected
by the tyranny microbe). As more and more people take the conservative approach
which I suggest society slowly improves and is a greater force for good in the
world likely to be able to correct the small (and increasingly large) injustices
that occur in its own back yard. This effect would then, slowly spread out into
the world. You could say that, in a way, this is what happened in history with the
gradual spreading of the respect for the rule of law that began in countries
like the United Kingdom way back in history.
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