Conservatives Are Liberal, and Liberals Are Conservative - On the Environment

In: The independent review: journal of political economy, Band 7, Heft 1, S. 103-107

Abstract

While conservatives tend to doubt the inherent morality of human nature & seek to maintain tradition, & liberals tend to believe in the inherent morality of human nature & seek beneficial change, these positions are reversed when the topic is environmentalism. This unexpected reversal may stem from the liberal tendency to see human beings as a part of nature, from the conservative tendency to see humans as separate from nature, or from a conservative notion that Adam Smith's idea of an "invisible hand" may apply in nature as well as in economics. It is argued that conservatives might favor environmental protection more than they currently do if they were able to recognize that the natural world is just as complex & fragile as the social world. D. Weibel