Still fighting Ozymandias

Conservatives fight liberals the way Indians fought cowboys. They win a fight. They celebrate. They move on. Every issue is re-evaluated every time.
 
Liberals fight conservatives like the cavalry fought Indians. After each fight, they build a fort and dig in. Their only interest is in more forts and more territory.
 
You give them civil rights, they want gay rights. You give them gay rights, they want transgender rights. You give them that and, yes, they will want more. Because each new generation wants a new fort and more territory. They will always look for something to champion and the causes will become more ridiculous but they will never abandon it.
 
The people patting themselves on the back for making the ladies room safe for men today … will be grownups in 20 years who’ve become conservative and they’ll resent being called bigots by the kids who are pushing to legalize pedophilia or bestiality.
 
It’s not good or bad. It’s just the cyclical nature of the universe. If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re still a liberal when you’re 40, you have no brain.
 
And like all civilizations, ours will become more liberal and more progressive. Like the Romans, and the Greeks, and the Sumerians. Like the Aztecs and the Mayans. Like the Egyptians. Like all the other dead cultures who showed promise in their youth, then progressed so far they destroyed themselves in an orgy of tolerance.
 
The good news is that what replaces us will be magnificent. Of course, it will be built by conservatives and capitalists. The Napoleans, the Alexanders, the Khans, the Washingtons. The people who understand that the true test of a machine is what it produces and not how well it tolerates rust.
 
Then that, too, will fall apart when it has worked so well and produced so long that people with no fear of starvation or suffering will become obsessed with making life better for people who contribute nothing and the expense of people who created all.
 
Morality, ethics and honor can fall out of fashion and they can be outlawed but they will always exist and in the end, they are the values that will be needed by those who have to rebuild from the rubble left when liberalism fails … as it always has and always will.
 
Politics come and go. Movements come and go. Nations and civilizations come and go. But the people are forever. We have witnessed the rise and fall of Ozymandias a thousand times and we still gather to tell of the time he thought he ruled us.
 
We always have and we always will.

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