Bridging the Great Divide

By William Gairdner

April 1, 2015

Most of us believe we believe what we believe because we believe it. In his new book, William Gairdner says our beliefs are too often about justifying our underlying — and unchallenged — liberal or conservative worldview

Many such underlying liberal/conservative disparities and divisions will be examined as I attempt to show that no matter what surface arguments someone defends, we can usually tease out their underlying philosophy of life and show how it always obliges the taking of specific moral and political positions at the surface to prevent the underlying belief system from crumbling But because modern liberals and conservatives have irreconcilable conceptions of human nature (as we shall see), the liberal will advocate spending more money to fix up bad public housing, while the conservative will say this is to miss the point: the real cause of crime is not the house, it's the home This book is more concerned about a much less obvious but more pervasive war of moral and political ideals within Western civilization itself, because from Pittsburgh to Paris, Buenos Aires to Buffalo, Vancouver to Venice, we have been engaged in a civil war of values and principles for a very long time

Read more...