What sort of image do we have of our society and the left and right? Often I think it's as if society is there, a platform or a landscape, while left and right act over time, moving one way or another.
But is that a good image. After all society is people, as are left and right, so society can move as well.
What's an alternative image: perhaps a crowd, some wearing red, some wearing blue, the majority, the less politically involved, wearing gray. So you take a snapshot in 1960 of the crowd and you see the reds and blues scattered through the crowd. Take another snapshot today and you see the reds clustered together, the blues clustered-they've both become more cohesive.
But that image doesn't reflect a society's movement. Maybe an image is Hawaii, where the continental plate moves over a volcanic hot spot, which creates the various island. In this image "society" would be all the people, the economy, laws, etc. So society could change because of innovations in technology, in the rest of the world etc. Meanwhile there would be two "hot spots"; each representing a temperament which seems to be common in people at large: one conservative, one liberal.
That covers the fact there always seems to be a left and a right, a conservative and a liberal faction. And it allows for the fact that conservatives in the 1950's could be strong supporters of segregation, while conservatives today are opposed to racial segregation.
Don't know, maybe I need to think more.
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