McFreedom
Politics, Guns, Law and TechFriday, October 10, 2003
Conservative vs. Liberal, Again
Professor Reynolds (or more precisely, one his readers) alleges left-wing media bias in calling Iranian mullahs "conservatives." As I've noted before, standard usage is that a conservative is one who wants to conserve the status quo and a liberal is one who wants to change it. In our society, the labels have stuck, and now mean rightist and leftist, respectively. But, when describing other countries, especially ones with entrenched regimes, it is perfectly correct to speak of the regime's defenders as "conservatives." In Russia, in 1989, a conservative was a communist. Now, it's a democrat (or maybe a "Putinist"). That's not a media conspiracy, it's the meaning of the words.
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