The Evolutionary Balance of Liberals and Conservatives

Over hundreds of thousands of years, since humans lived in tribes of hunter-gatherers, evolution has wired some people to be more liberal minded and others more conservative. Both mindsets can be advantageous to survival. I'm talking "liberal" and "conservative" in a broad sense, not the current Democrat and Republican parties. Generally speaking, liberals want to change the status quo while conservatives want to keep the status quo.

Contrary to the popular misconception among liberals, the evolutionary reason for conservatives is not to roll back or restrict rights; it is to try to conserve the rights and freedoms we already have. If current society is functional (which if it exists, it is at least functional to some degree), than conservatives would want to prevent liberals from making new changes to society (aka the tribe). Nobody knows if any given change (no matter how "progressive" it may seem) will actually work as intended to make society better. A change for "progress" may actually lead to the regression of society—perhaps even its destruction.

This is why both liberals and conservatives are needed for a healthy society. Conservatives fight to prevent making bad changes while liberals fight to make good changes. Inevitably some change will be good and some change will be bad. This is more than evident from the study of history. We cannot know the results of societal changes beforehand. The push and pull of liberals and conservatives ensures only minor changes to society are made at a time, and if the new policy works, conservatives will accept it and it becomes a part of the functioning society. Hence Michael Malice's line, "Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit."

Once a change is incorporated into society by conservatives, liberals will inevitably want to then make another change—push the boundaries even further. And of course the conservatives will protest because they don't know if the new changes will have negative effects and ultimately lead to destruction of society. Conservatives can recognize if a new policy doesn't work. Society (the voters) will backlash and influence politicians to roll back that policy to the way things were before. An example is the 1960s when things shifted too liberal too fast with the hippie movement. Conservatives counter-acted with the War on Drugs.

Evolution produces roughly equal numbers of conservatives and liberals in society (just as it does males and females) to serve as a yin/yang equilibrium. The liberal/conservative balance of a civilization is an evolutionary safeguard to make sure the civilization builds and expands without becoming too liberal or too conservative, neither of which is good. Too liberal and you've got communism; too conservative and you've got fascism. A healthy society needs a balance of both.

This is the way human society has progressed throughout history and it will continue to do so into the future. Liberals and conservatives fight each other while making small incremental changes to society. The cycle continues over and over again, forever. Obviously current US society is not functioning fluidly. This is because there is a power imbalance (over the government and culture) between liberals and conservatives. I don't think I need to tell you which side has too much sway at the moment. Society will only begin to function again once that power balance is equalized.