Bless me father for I have sinned, its been over a year since my last blog. God it feels good to get that off my chest.

I have been pondering just what is the difference between liberals and conservatives. I mean, I have found smart people from both sides of the thought divide and have given great thought to what lets smart folks come to very different conclusions on things. From this I have distilled out 3 major properties (or ways of thinking) that define if one is conservative or liberal. Drum roll please:

1) Width of concern. What I mean by this is how important broad issues are to a person and where they put their focus. If one is heavily focused on self and family, and less on issues further from this field they tend to be more conservative.

Put another way, liberals tend to think in terms of the broader group and conservatives more about the individual.

As an example, take the death/estate tax. A conservative looks at this tax and asks how it is fair. The individual made lots of money, why can't he pass it to his family. A liberal looks at the same issue in the context of how it affects society as a whole. He will point out that rich families, passing down billions of dollars for generations can create ruling classes free to buy whatever laws they like. That the lack of an estate/death tax would damage society as a whole, and not give much weight to the unfairness to the individual

Both of these points of view are quite valid. The liberal point of view is just wider than the conservatives.

2) Weighting of Luck. By this I mean how much effect one thinks luck plays in life's outcomes. Liberals tend to believe that a persons lot in life is affected by many things such as hard work, cleverness etc. but they also put weight on luck. Conservatives not so much. For conservatives, luck only plays a minor role, far over ridden by personal achievements.

As an example, a homeless person on the street seen by the liberal elicits pity as luck has obviously not been with this person. For the conservative, the person needs to buckle down and get a job. (These are stereotypes of course but meant as an example).

Its hard to know how much luck actually plays into a given situation, but it does seem to be an apparent difference in the thought patterns between the two groups.

3) Ease of Forming a Loyalty Mindset. This one is difficult to describe but seems to be a difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives, I have observed, seem to form loyalties easier than liberals.

As an example of this, conservative seem far more loyal to their sports teams then liberals. Liberals may love sports, but the die hard loyalty willing to fight over a particular team is more likely to be present in a person with a conservative leaning.

As another example, when Rush Limbaugh was caught abusing drugs, his following still remained loyal, even with the fact that it presented a clear ambiguity with what Rush had previously discussed on his show. Yet Rush's audience really has no personal experience with Rush, expect for listening to his show. They feel a loyalty to Rush as they are part of his group. Its interesting that there really aren't any good examples of liberal talk shows, which I believe is an example of this property in action.

For liberals, loyalty seems to require more interaction than just being a member of a group. Gaining loyalty requires personal interaction and the building of trust. Liberals need this interaction to actually become loyal.

Becoming loyal easier may have many benefits and either way of thinking is just as reasonable.

Thats it. I am sure there are more properties but these are what I have so far. The other side of this coin is how much conservatives and liberals have in common in their thought patterns. We seem to focus on the differences (as these are the most easily exploited for election purposes), but the two sides actually do care very much about many of the same things.

Thanks for listening, and let me know if you have some thoughts on this as well.