I do consider myself to be a libertarian, at least more so than anything else. However I was a member of the supposed conservative party in Sweden for 15 years and I still have a couple of conservative opinions that I think is getting forgotten in politics as well as in our modern societies.
What I am mainly thinking about is the celebratory feeling and love that comes with tradition and history.
Lefties as well as many libertarians for that matter confuse this conservative trait with nationalism and sometimes even racism. That is not what I am talking about.
What binds people together isn’t their blood or color of their skin, it is tradition and a history going back generations. That what has formed us and our society to what it is. From our ancestors to our parents in the past handed down to us and from us handed along to our children and grandchildren of the future - it is history that binds us together.
Sometimes our history is something to celebrate, most of the time it is not, but that has no barring - it is still history. From wars to religious madness, from migration to ancient rituals, from persecutions to songs, from anecdotes to inventions, it is all a part of us, who we are.
Libertarians are very open-minded, future-oriented and often love technology and progress. It is not uncommon that libertarians are a sci-fi fans or technology-geeks. Building things faster, better, taller and to a lower cost with less effort is a big part of the libertarian conciseness. Not for economic reasons primarily as our opponents argue, but rather for the sake of progress, to not stand still, to evolve. Reach for the stars and dream, be what you can be and go forward.
Since the first and foremost enemy of progress and the main obstacle in the way of people’s dreams is government, it automatically concludes that libertarians don’t like government.
I am all for that, and I agree, government is the enemy, or at least the main enemy. But in that process and with progress we shouldn’t forget who we are, what brought us here and what came before.
What I am saying is that we should run towards the finish line but also check out the scenery, maybe take an extra breath now and again to contemplate who we are.
My conviction that this is important, not only for myself but for all humans, is one of the reasons why I headed into politics in the first place. Sadly I soon discovered that the so called conservatives had the same agenda as everyone else in politics, to gain power, to rule. If they could use traditions or history to prove a point or win voters, fine, otherwise it was yet another nuisance on the way towards power.
Another problem with ‘conservative’ movements is that they sometimes take tradition or religion too far. And too often they cross over the line to prove lefties right about having close to racist and nationalist ideas.
I think it is sad that the conservative idea that we should sometimes take a step back to truly understand and see how great we’ve become because of generations of trial-and-errors, have today been forgotten.
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