All of nature flows in a great
river of ever-evolving, profoundly experimental and somewhat romantic
liberalism, yet within this river of liberalism occur innumerable eddies in
which the local status quo is more or less conserved, and, when people are involved,
mythologized.
For example, the flow of evolution
of Life on Earth toward ever greater complexity and interconnectedness is
quintessentially liberal, but the species themselves represent conservative,
fairly static expressions of local ecological niches (Species evolution appears
to proceed in "jerks," not gradually, as Darwin originally supposed). Similarly, the
lifespan of an individual human can be seen as a liberalistic gushing forward,
beginning in a self- absorbed, ignorant state and maturing into ever more
broad-mindedness, and concern for the larger community. However, the
society-imposed routines, prejudices, and unquestioning allegiances to
established power structures, which basically define a person's identity and
facilitate the accumulation of material wealth, are fundamentally conservative
in nature.
You can see that I'm thinking in
terms of classical conservatism (the idea of conserving the status quo, of
being traditional) and of classical liberalism (embracing change, diversity and
experimentation). Politicians often depart from these ideals for their own
short-term gain, and this is never pretty. For instance, there's nothing
conservative about Bush's deficit spending, and there's nothing liberal about
Kerry's voting to make war in Iraq.
I am convinced that in the broad
scheme of things conservatism and liberalism are of equal importance. In the
absence of liberality anything becomes like a crystal: Comfortable and
beautiful, maybe, but forever stuck being the way it is right now. There are no
currents of creativity, no blossomings, no births and rebirths, no magic
anywhere. Yet, without conservatism, chaos reins. There's such roiling,
undisciplined confusion that nothing can take hold, nothing substantial can
ever be produced, and there's no stable perch from which to admire the rest of
Creation.
Therefore, as always, the trick is
to follow The Middle Path. Do as Nature does, and artfully and lovingly mingle
the two opposing inclinations. The forest follows the Middle Path when its liberal
impulses send forth a great diversity of highly mobile, fast-reproducing and
thus fast evolving bugs and fungi to consume the leaves of firmly rooted,
slow-changing, trees. But nature protects its conservative components by
granting them powerful defenses of their own. Because of this Middle-Path
approach, the forest survives and itself continues to evolve and grow.