Conservatives are not defenders of the constitution. Liberals have always defended freedom. They've always defended the rights of EVERYONE including minorities. The ACLU has always defended freedom from government police abuse. Conservatives only care about the freedom to have guns. Other than that, they are the American equivalent of the Taliban.
@ Bold: I like how people in the United States like to make up totally fictitious stories. Neither conservatives or liberals have been perpetual defenders of freedom. I speak like Jesus when I say that, in that I speak the plain truth about that, rather than telling blatant lies to promote a political party or some conceptions of "liberal" and "conservative."
Also, I'm a firm believer in accepting reality and gauging the battle field as accurately as one can. Dropping Americans off in Vietnam telling them Vietnamese are short, docile people, whom you'll subjugate in a very short time does no good, its fiction and fairy tale, but that is exactly the fiction one US President had about Americans vs Vietnamese (the French had forewarned him the Vietnamese are some tough SOB's but he dismissed the French as weak and literally called the Vietnamese a "short and docile people" and claimed rough and tough Americans would have a very quick victory: failure to grasp reality. And in my opinion doing so is a major sin). And so, coming to terms with
reality helps one understand battles and helps one better avoid traps. Therefore, knowing that liberals took away American's (and European's) freedoms before, helps one be able o avoid the trap of following without question every flute playing Democrat or liberal.
Liberals were the primary drivers of the scientific eugenics movement. There were conservatives that joined along in that (just as conservatives today are homo-feminists). But the liberals were the primary flute players.
Eugenicist Movement in America: Victims Coming Forward
I have the paperback book
Genome by Matt Ridley. But fortunately it is available free online in pdf form. This link for full book:
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The pages in this pdf form coincide with the pages of the actual paperback book. Pages 291 to 293 are instructive in terms of this conversation. GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were Catholic intellectuals and authors. GK Chesterton was a Catholic philosopher as well.
From book:
Britain was not unique; in countries where the influence of the
Roman Catholic church was strong, there were no eugenic laws.
The Netherlands avoided passing such laws. The Soviet Union, more
concerned about purging and killing clever people than dull ones,
never put such a law on its books. But Britain stands out... To be sure, there were a few lone voices of dissent. One or two
intellectuals remained suspicious, among them Hilaire Belloc and
G. K. Chesterton, who wrote that 'eugenicists had discovered how
to combine hardening of the heart with softening of the head'. But
be in no doubt that most Britons were in favour of eugenic laws.
Scientists like to tell themselves today that
eugenics was always seen as a 'pseudoscience' and frowned on by
true scientists, especially after the rediscovery of Mendelism (which
reveals how many more silent carriers of mutations there are than
frank mutants), but there is little in the written record to support
this. Most scientists welcomed the flattery of being treated as experts
in a new technocracy. They were perpetually urging immediate action
by government. (In Germany, more than half of all academic biolo-
gists joined the Nazi party - a higher proportion than in any other
professional group - and not one criticised eugenics. )
This video about Chesterton (with actor in it at some point) touches on political parties, biological determinism, and the issue of freedom: the
ability to choose not to rape a woman as opposed to merely the ability to cross lines and do anything.