General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm from the south. [View all]rrneck
(17,671 posts)Last edited Thu Oct 17, 2013, 10:25 PM - Edit history (1)
Do you know how to make your own clothes? I don't. I guess I could learn if I thought about it, but why? I'll just go buy whatever they have at the store. Off the rack clothes all look alike anyway. Changes in fashion are pretty predictable.
Ideology is a different story. I don't want somebody to design a generic ideology for me. That, I want to make for myself. I'm not a liberal because everybody around me was or because I thought it would look good on me. I'm a liberal because of how I think things ought to be.
That doesn't make those "born liberal" any less so. Nor does it make them necessarily somehow shallow or vain. But just as wealth and privilege bring with them a sense of entitlement, so too can an ideology.
Since liberalism presumes cultural change there is an inherent danger in uncritically embracing something you were born with. "We've always done it that way" is a curiously conservative attitude toward liberalism.
Conservatives tend to be so because they don't want nobody messing with the deal they've got. When we defend ideology for our own self interest rather than for its efficacy, it can become social plumage.
I never did like hand me downs.