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Even though I am a liberal, this "conservative = closed = insecure" is not true, in fact has never been true. Let's try and understand through a few examples. Edmund Burke, in a sense founder of modern conservatism, not only supported the American Revolution but also led the
impeachment of Warren Hastings on his conduct in India, the American Declaration of Independence comes from Republicanism, in Germany it was the conservative Helmut Kohl helped formulate German reunification, Angela Merkel, let us not forget, is a conservative politician,
in India, everyone from Vivekananda to Aurobindo, from Tilak to Lala Lajpat Rai, would be, if one were to note, placed under the 'conservative' sub-head, as would Thomas Merton, the sublime Trappist monk; of course all of Chicago macroeconomics could be considered 'conservative'
and as you know Milton Friedman won the Nobel, also, conservatism has had a long history of, well, conserving heritage and the environment. in the US, for instance, from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan; in media, Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, was a conservative. One
could go on and on, but the moral of the story is, a blanket slur on the idea of conservatism is not useful, and more importantly historically inaccurate. In fact, if by conservative one means a believer in god or religion, as many liberals today do, then most of the classical
arts, painting, music, drama, architecture, were all built by 'conservatives'. In fact, some Leftists use that filter to argue that Gandhi too was a conservative. He was certainly a believer in god and religion. So, there. It all depends on how we define these things.
