Say Anything Blog

You forgot: Honest, trustworthy, clean and reverent… I tell people I can’t remember if that’s me or the Boy Scouts!

Trolls. It’s what’s for breakfast!
And then I eat their lunch.

Boy scouts.

What’s going to happen to US industry when the global warming extremists like John McCain double the price of electricity?  I would think all these factories will close and set up in countries where they aren’t scared of technology.

Unfortunately, conservative has been applied to people unwilling to accept changes to society, whereas many Conservatives are amongst the most progressive members of society.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

MOFAL, true, but only by the “progressives” in media that have the resources to create global changes to word definitions.

I suppose the word means different things in the US than it does in the UK. One of our main political parties is called The Conservative Party, which leads to many of our negative connotations.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

That makes sense.  I often ponder stories of the Bible.  One such story is the tale of Babylon.  I wonder how disparate languages could not have formed given distance and a lack of formal education. 

I don’t know about the “conservative party” in GB.  What is their platform?

Essentially, to promote social stability and the rights of property. See a history
here.
Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill are famous Conservatives.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

I don’t think that a conservative is someone “unwilling to accept change”, so much as they are against change for the sake of change itself. A conservative is reticent to try and fix what isn’t broken.

Essentially, to promote social stability and the rights of property.

Sounds good to me, why is that a negative connotation?

Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill are famous Conservatives.

I liked both of these leaders.

I’m reading the history you linked, thanks!

The negative connotation of the word came about because a lot of people (wrongly) blamed the government for the (worldwide) recession of the eighties and nineties and the financial hardships they suffered during those years.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Ah, Thanks for that! 

I was just getting to the late 1900’s in Stuart Ball’s piece.  Linked above.

MOFAL:

Unfortunately, conservative has been applied to people unwilling to accept changes to society, whereas many Conservatives are amongst the most progressive members of society.

I use the word “reactionary” (opposite of “liberal") to describe people who are unwilling to accept changes.

I use conservative to describe a person who uses an evolutionary approach to problem solving (the system works, it just needs tweeking) and progressive to describe a person who prefers a revolutionary approach (the system is broken, it needs replacing).

Carrick:
Well the pond separates us in more ways than one. The language we use is increasingly divergent. Ultimately, for me, evolutionary, progressive and liberal describe similar people; reactionary describes people so unwilling to accept change they have to shout in your face to tell you their feelings on a subject and conservative has similar connotations to those you describe.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

MOFAL,

Well the pond separates us in more ways than one. The language we use is increasingly divergent.

Thanks to the internet, we are able to converse in ways that have never been possible before… We are able to define terms to each other.  Instant translations are becoming reality… pretty soon we’ll have pocket voice translators and worldwide video blogging… the world is shrinking.

Thank God for AlGore…

Also true. I doubt worldwide governance will ever be possible, but a worldwide consensus on certain issues - I can see it within our lifetime. What will they be...?

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Well, we can start with definitions of words.  Consensus is difficult without that.