They really are different

Nothing in this notation shall be used as any commentary on the good or ill of any religion or its tenets. That’s an entirely different posting. Here, we discuss only concept. To business, then.

In a way, the whole left-right dynamic is a little like the Latter Day Saints’ understanding of the fight between Lucifer and the Almighty. In the Judeo-Christian sphere, Lucifer got in trouble because he considered himself the Almighty’s equal; but in the Mormons’ vision, the disagreement was over free will. 

To the LDS, the Almighty gave people free will, even though some of them would use it to achieve awful things. Lucifer thought it would be ‘better’, serve ‘the greater good’, if people were not given free will, but were preconditioned to serve the Almighty according to the laws. The disagreement ended roughly the same way as the J-C dispute.

The sociopolitical right believes that individual liberty is the highest good, even though some people will use that liberty for appalling ends. Freedom is worth having, even if the price is sometimes tragic, or atrocious. [side note: a tragedy is an event that was unforeseen, with unfortunate consequences; an atrocity is an event that was perpetrated deliberately. An accidental aircraft crash is tragic, 9/1/1 was an atrocity]

The left believes that almost any liberty (the few they want to protect are,,, interesting) can and should be sacrificed on the altar of ‘the good of the whole’; that ‘the needs of the many’ is a license to exercise authority over absolutely anything.

Viewed this way, Lucifer might well register democrat. In one’s less charitable moments, (or when one gets tired of pretending otherwise) one notes that the very few people one considers may be truly evil,,, are solidly on the left.

It may be simpler than this, however. Actual conservatives operrate as they do, because standards matter. They are nothing without principles…

… the left usually operates as if they don’t hae any.