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Liberals and Conservatives, Religious and Political: a Conjuncture of Modern History
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Apr 21, 8:32am
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•http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9...
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...The rhetorical contrast "liberal/conservative" ties the concepts to the mobilization of conflict irrespective of its content. Our familiar congruence of liberalism and conservatism in religion and politics is historically specific; it emerged at the exhaustion of the religious wars in the late seventeenth century, and developed along with secularization into the early twentieth century. As particularism along ethnic and gender lines becomes a major grounds of mobilization in the late twentieth century, the classic liberal/conservative contrast appears to be eroding.
What is the difference between a liberal and a conservative?
Around 1965, if you were an American intellectual, the difference was obvious. A conservative was like a southern sheriff: racist, authoritarian, anticommunist, intolerant, fundamentalist in religion. The liberal was the civil rights worker, the opposite of the conservative on every political point; in religion, she or he was an atheist (possibly a secular Jew) or a cosmopolitan such as Unitarian or an adherent of nonsectarian Hindu spiritualism. Religious and political liberalism were congruent, as were religious and political conservatism. Sociologists like Talcott Parsons connected the distinction more abstractly to the dimension of universalism and particularism.
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