Believe it or not this seems to be news to me.
Granted that I’ve only taken a few courses in political science and only one of which would fall into the category of political theory, but typically I’ve noted a trend of many people tying these two ideologies together even though they are very different. I have heard of the analogy that Hayek tries to debunk numerous times (the one about a the whole….”imagine a line, this line is a spectrum of political identity. You have Conservatism on the far right and then you have liberalism on the center left and socialism on the far left.”) I lived how Hayek defines each of these positions then notes that a more correct analogy would be that of a triangle “with the conservatives occupying one corner, with the socialists pulling toward the second and the liberals toward the third.” (p. 389)
I thought it was interesting he noted that in a sense Socialism can be considered to be closer to Conservatism than Liberalism. This idea at first sounds outlandish and any political T.V. pundit would argue against it in a heartbeat. Hayek though, finds points to back up this argument. For instance his point about how reformed Socialists typically end up favoring Conservatism rather than Liberalism. This is something that I have notice among those who have made that change. He notes that Conservatives favor authority in order to have liberty and Socialists who favor authority to constrict it.
Like I have noted in this post this idea is very new to me, and I find it more surprising than the title of the chapter. :-)
See you all this Thursday now it’s off to getting ready for some finals.
No comments:
Post a Comment