Liberal vs. Conservative

(from Thom Hartmann's transcript section of thomhartmann.com)

"A true progressive, a true liberal, gets it that we're all in this together; all of life together; we're a community; we humans and all other living things, we're a community; that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Progressives see peace as strength not as weakness and see war as an admission of failure, not a noble venture.

Now, true conservatives - Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Ulysses Grant, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney - true conservatives believe that each man is an island. It's every man for himself. That humans are superior to all other forms of nature and so killing nature for fun or for recreation or simply as, you know, as a routine thing, no big deal. "So what? Half the species are going extinct, who cares?"

Conservatives think that strength always wins over weakness, no matter what its impact is on community. This whole idea that, you know, the powerful win: survival of the fittest. It's not, you know, the reality isn't survival of the fittest. The reality is survival of the co-operator. If an individual organ in your body decided that it was going to take over the rest your body and start consuming all the resources in your body, that's not called survival of the fittest - that's not called winning competition - that's called cancer."