Monday, May 12, 2008

Beyond Left and Right

From Godspy:
Will Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming social encyclical be understood by a culture that divides everything into Left and Right?

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “The whole modern world has divided itself into conservatives and progressives. The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”

The tired categories of Left and Right, which we associate with Liberal (or Progressive) and Conservative, originated in the French Revolution, and have long outlived their usefulness. They are way too clunky to capture the complex political opinions that most of us make up as we go along, these days.

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