Yes, this is yet another rant nobody has asked for. Sorry about that.
You often hear about traditional and liberal values from the politicians yet hardly anybody defines except in the broadest terms (essentially “for all good and against all bad; if you’re not fully supporting us that means you’re an enemy of good”). So here’s my attempt to make sense of them and which one should be preferred.
Surprisingly, liberal values have been formalised by the prominent expert on chaos and decay C.N. Parkinson. Here I quote three recognisable characteristics of liberal values as formulated by him about half a century ago:
- The first is that their views are based upon a sense of highly moral but unstated and unproven assumptions.
- The second is that they are savagely intolerant of any views that differ from theirs.
- The third is that they are always remote from the arena to which their high-minded principles are meant to apply.
I’ve not ever encountered any more or less formal definition of traditional values. A lazy attempt on that would be to take traditional values as the direct opposite and define them as practical, tolerant and down to earth. In reality though you also hear a lot about high moral principles, the tolerance to different views is questionable at best, and they feel equally remote—but mostly in time instead of space. I believe the last bit is the most important here and that traditional values are those that are defined by three main features:
- protest against the current state of things;
- relating to some past state as the ideal one to which people should return;
- and not actually specifying what state that would be (or at least heavily idealising it, effectively detaching it from reality).
For the distilled examples of both (not to the point of civil war but it feels dangerously close) you can look at the USA. Though I’m not sure if those are real values and not a religion in itself, often chosen not because of philosophical or (nominal) religious beliefs but rather—not unlike party allegiance—either forced on you by your close environment or picked to spite the others (like in an old parable about one man who was offered anything on the condition his neighbour would get twice as much—and he asked to rip his eye out).
So which set appeals to me more? Neither, really. I don’t like to stick to the unproven ideas just because they sound moral but neither I want old proven ideas when all they were proven is to be stupid and/or bad. As an occasional Discordianist I prefer the principle of thinking for yourself; whatever values are out there, they should be evaluated on both moral and practical aspects before accepting—and re-evaluated after some time because tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. To give an example, hating all foreigners because they’re different is stupid—but switching to the opposite is claiming that all foreigners are good (and better than you) is equally unsubstantiated; the proper attitude IMO is to treat them as equals and adjust attitude depending on their typical behaviour (while not forgetting they’re all individuals, so judge concrete people based on their actions).
Of course it’s not for most people because maintaining such set of values requires a non-trivial effort and denies you instant gratification of belonging to a large group. At least I’m fine with thinking and not feeling happy.