Excerpt:
The left is adaptive. The right is adoptive. Or, as Mark Twain put it, "the radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." The right looks at the status quo, concludes that it is -- in the words of Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss -- "the best of all possible worlds," and strives to preserve it. The left looks at the status quo, concludes that it is imperfect, and strives to replace it with something better.
The period of nominal libertarian alignment with the right was a direct result of the
victory of the left in the 18th and 19th centuries. Classical liberalism and its doctrine of freedom smashed monarchy and feudalism and made the Industrial Revolution -- and therefore modern civilization as we know it -- possible. The "conservatives" looked upon what the "liberals" had created, saw that it was good, and sought to freeze society in that mold. Meanwhile, of course, the left had moved off in other directions, many of them (but not all of them) much less amenable to liberty.
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