Maybe someone should actually step back and consider what is meant by liberal and conservative. It is probably safe to say that if we went back to the dawn of humanity and studied tribal structures, there would be people whom we considered liberal and others we would consider conservative.

Those pushing the bounds of the society and culture would reasonably be the liberals, while those seeking to strengthen the bonds and structures holding it together would be the conservatives. Often this equates to youth and age.

As Robert Frost put it; “If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart and if you are not conservative when you are old, you have no head.”

So this is a tension that not only goes to the foundations of society, but life itself. The anarchy of desire, versus the tyranny of judgement. The heart and the head.

Apparently though, this is too elemental for academics to understand.

We are linear, goal oriented creatures, with a narrative based civilization, so we assume life is about the punchline at the end of the narrative arc and anyone not going the same direction must be misbegotten fools.

The reality though, is that nature is more about the cycles and feedback, than it is about the shiny objects we tend to focus on.