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Liberals vs. Conservatives is a False Dichotomy

Most things we commonly split into two piles fall apart if you think about them:

In the U.S. we divide people politically as Liberals and Conservatives, but the terms are so poorly defined it’s easy to find examples of people who have some liberal views and some conservative views.  There are other important alternatives for defining a person’s politics (what do you want to liberate? what do you want to conserve? how do you think it should be done?), but the convenience of the false dichotomy of liberal vs. conservative hides them from consideration. The convenience of binary logic blinds us from how poor a foundation for thought it can be.

All dichotomies can be sub-divided into smaller groups. This is rarely observed in debate, but if you believe you can divide anything in half, this applies recursively. You can have conservative liberals and liberal conservatives. And conservative liberal conservatives and liberal conservative liberals. If you stop to carefully examine anything polarizing, even when you’re certain you’re on the right side, you’ll discover nuance, contradiction and subtlety that will cause any wise mind to challenge the merits of the initial dichotomy.

An excerpt from the post The False Dichotomy of False Dichotomies.