The characteristics (including ways of thinking, feeling and acting) that humans have.
In what way have have humans changed since the 1700s? Or the 700s? Or 700 BC?
Not only have human being not changed, but the concept of change is a defining characteristic between these groups- totalitarians imagine it is possible, conservatives know it is not.
1. Those with the false belief that human nature can be changed, molded by a particular governance include communists, socialists, Liberals, Progressives, fascists, Nazis...every totalitarian believes it is within the province of government to accomplish this.
a.The Communist Revolution is based on the idea of transforming human nature. “The
New Soviet man or
New Soviet person (
Russian: новый советский человек), as postulated by the ideologists of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an
archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the
Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single
Soviet people,
Soviet nation.
[1] New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
b. Progressives have a similar view: human nature is plastic; politics is a means of perfecting man!
c. In 1969, Hillary Rodham gave the student commencement address at Wellesley in which she said that “ for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible….We’re not interested in social reconstruction; it’s human reconstruction.”
http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffa..._____________________________________________
2. The view of classical liberals, those called conservatives today, is the very opposite: Human nature is a constant.
The Constitution commemorates our revolution, and, as Madison states in the ‘Federalist,’ is the greatest of all reflections on human nature…human beings are not angels.”
a. Humans are not perfectible, but are capable of self government. The republican form of government presupposes this idea of humans. Our government is not a controlling government, but must itself be controlled: by the Constitution.
Such understanding is the reason for checks and balances......
b. "The Soviet Union attempted to create the New Soviet Man with gulags, psychiatric hospitals, and firing squads for seventy years and succeeded only in producing a more corrupt culture.”
Bork, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” p. 198