A while back I saw an episode of Family guy where someone was listening to an English version of a foreign news cast. Terms like "21:00" for time and "kilometres" for distance were used liberally. The idea behind the skit was to make people comfortably uncomfortable with the culture shock. I wasn't real affected that way. I was not made uncomfortable by the use of units that are not in daily use. I do use 24 hour time or military time all the time. I use it all day at work. I started using it all time time at home. Only when I'm talking to Americans, every one I know, do I convert the time to 12 hour AM/PM terms.
I bet I could convert to metric and 24 hour time in a week. I would do it and probably only look back a couple of times after the first week. I would catch myself using the term "... by a mile" and "by and inch" probably for the rest of my life. There might be several others. Who cares. It is not catastrophic to be dated by your words. Not most of the time.
This makes me feel like a liberal. Aren't liberal values the ones that move forward to better ideas? Aren't liberal values the ones that make our lives better? Aren't conservative values the ones that hold on to the past at any cost? Aren't conservative views the ones that promote making what is there work instead of making something new that works better?
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Don't become a slave to words or phrases. It is delusional to try and equate liberal with good or better and conservative with bad or worse. For example, our current financial problem is mostly the result of bankers becoming too liberal with other people's money. They recklessly lent a lot of money to people to buy houses they were not really qualified for and are now defaulting on. In the past bankers were more conservative and actually required people to make a down payment and have a stable source of income. If we had followed these more conservative practices the country would not be in such a bad recession as we are. My point is that it is important to look for good workable ideas and solutions to problems, and not be concerned about whether they appear to be "conservative" or "liberal".
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