Challenges For Liberals And Conservatives

Both people who want to implement change and people who want to restore a previous state of existence first need to understand what they are dealing with.

The people who want to change the status quo – any status quo – need to understand why the status quo exists. If you want to change the gender roles, you need to understand why the gender roles are there. Once you do that you have two choices. One is to agree with the reasons for the status quo and keep it. The other is to see how the status quo is due to wrongful influences and be able to make a more convincing case for changing it.

The people who want to restore a previous state of existence need to understand why the changes have happened. If you re-create a state of affairs before the change, you will be re-creating the state of affairs that lead to the change, which means that you will be met with similar forces that lead the change to take place. If you want to re-create 1950s, you will be re-creating conditions that lead to 1960s, which means that you will be met with something like 1960s further down the road. Similarly if you want to re-create the conditions preceding the labor movement, then you will be re-creating conditions that lead to the creation of the labor movement, which means that you will be slammed with something like the labor movement yet again.

In both cases it merits to understand the reasons for what one does not like. You need to understand the reasons for the status quo. You also need to understand the reasons for the changes from a pre-existing status quo.

Once that is done, you can either agree with the status quo or the changes; or you can see where either have gone wrong and pursue your course in a more informed and more effective way.