Fox must move further Left...right?
Country Music had to move Left...right?
NASCAR had to move Left...right?
Is it inevitable, are we all headed Left?
At some point I'll make a thread on this. Should be fun.
It is the inevitability of social change.
Over time human society tends to move in a direction we would call "left."
Conservatives are people who oppose, in general, this changing social model but
along with being wrong on every issue they do serve a role in slowing social change
promoting social evolution over social revolution.
This distinguishes Conservative from "conservative" these self IDd "conservatives"
are not Conservative and ill die out in a few short years.
You're describing the West, not the world overall. Plenty of non-western nations are still quite conservative -- primarily in the Islamic world.
And frankly, it's starting to look like some of them have the right idea.
Even a lot of Western friendly nations like Japan are not nearly as socially liberal as the West, and for good reason. They understand the values of family and tradition.
Geez-Louise are you people just that thick?
"inevitability "
I means over time. The West:
500 years ago people were hanged, burned at the stake, and tortured for the "crime" of not being Christian.
300 years ago an unattended woman was available for sex. whether she wanted or not.
50 years ago people were being tortured and killed because of their race
20 years ago people were being tortured and killed for being gay.
That's your enlightened West.
And believing that things become more socially liberal "inevitably" over time is ignorant of human history overall. The Ancient Romans and Ancient Greeks could be described as more liberal than Medieval Europe.
In our lifetimes, you might be able to say that Western nations will continue to shift leftward on social issues over time, but that's not necessarily going to happen a century or two from now.
When looking at a longer timeline, we can accurately suggest that societies go through phases in which the social paradigm can shift leftward, but revolutions can radically change that. Afghanistan was a lot more liberal under Soviet rule than it was under the Taliban. Iran was a lot more liberal under the Shah than they are under the Ayatollah.
In Western nations, you can even see it sometimes. Franco was a lot more conservative than his predecessors. In a lot of modern Europe, there has been a growing backlash against open immigration policies, as shown by the harsher policies that Macron has taken towards Muslims lately. Denmark has also grown a lot more conservative about certain societal policies that affect Muslims.
So, it's not as "inevitable" as you think. What is inevitable is that people will react accordingly if the repercussions of a policy become too detrimental to a society. Many progressive policies can create a conservative backlash even among moderate people.
When you claim that Iran was more "liberal" under the Shah you are showing a lack of understanding on the topic.
The Shah ranked right up there with Pol Pot for his cruelty to his people.
The fact that he was 'our" doesn't excuse that no matter how hard you try.
You're looking at blips in history and calling them trends. That's what Conservatives do to tell themselves their failing ideas are justified.
For example, you point out Medieval Europe as being "conservative" while ignoring the plague that created the Dark Ages and the Renaissance that followed. That period was a blip in the march of history whose long term mark is left only in museums and archeologists shelves.
You're suggesting the Shah and Pol Pot are on par with each other and then say I lack understanding. Pot, meet kettle.
Yeah, the Shah was oppressive in some respects, but he was less oppressive than the Ayatollahs have been. Women's rights were better under the Shah, for example.
It's not about "excusing" anything. I'm just pointing out that your theory isn't correct.
I'm not looking at blips, I'm looking at cycles that occur over millennia. It is not a simple shift from right to left in social politics with human history. The problem with a lot of the Western perspective is that it seems to think that the Enlightenment represents a permanent shift for human society. It doesn't. Like any other chapter of history, its legacy will likely end eventually. What replaces it is anyone's guess, but there's no guarantee that the current preferences for postmodern thinking survive for much longer than a century, possibly even less than that.
The Dark Ages are usually described as beginning after the fall of Rome. That was several centuries before the "Black Death." The plague certainly didn't help society in terms of development, but the Dark Ages were caused by the collapse of an empire. The plague had more significance in stagnating the progress that Europe had made over the previous few centuries of the Dark Ages. It essentially postponed the Renaissance. Europe might have advanced a little sooner, had it not been for the plague.
A millennium from now, humanity might view the Enlightenment as a "blip," but that's neither here nor there. The point remains that the direction of human history and society is not uniform or a simple matter of shifting to the left.