Ideally, political discourse would be based on rationally examining things on a case-by-case basis and figuring out which ones are beneficial and which ones are not. In reality, what we have is groups of people using general axioms (in the case of liberals, what is the status quo is bad, and and in the case of conservatives, what is the status quo is good) to decide since people can't possible figure out each and every single policy decision by themselves.
Liberals can and can be wrong on things, like the idea that strengthening trade unions makes workers better off overall (this only works in cases where labour markets are imperfect, which is not the case in most nations) or passing restrictions on random parts of guns in an attempt to reduce the crime rate. So yes, we need conservatives, even if they have proven to be utterly terrible at certain important aspects of government, because allowing any political idealogy to run roughshod over all decision-making processes will definitely not get you an optimal result.
Log in to comment