Recently in a political discussion I heard someone refer to another's ideas as "innocent". It made me aware of some ideas that really brought clarity to the differences in our political discourse. Here was my response.
When So and So says "innonence" I think what she he geting at it a fundamental difference between liberals, dems, leftists, and the like vs conservatives, libertarians, and the like. The later sees the reality of the flaws in man, which history would suggest are selfish, brutal, oppressive, and horrible. Slavery, rascism, genocide, looting, etc.etc. Whereas the other view is that man hasn't achieved his potential yet. That side believes man can be more caring and collective and fair, yadda, yadda, yadda.
So we believe any system needs to face these realities and structure around it, whereas the other side believes man can achieve some more perfect state. That is the "innonence" I think she is alluding to. I understand her perspective. It's not really meant as an insult I think anyway, but its a fundamental difference in how we see the world. You believe (I think) man can obtain this more perfect state, through education, and a major culture shift, and we believe that history teaches us that is utterly impossible based on past experiences. For example, when you consider the constitution you might see a bunch of rights, that are given TO you from the government, whereas we see a bunch of rights that stem from beyond government and are in fact protections FROM government. That's because we believe that all men including any system created by man is flawed (the government) and thus we need protection FROM the tyranny any such system might impose on us.
So you see its not really "innocence" but a difference is how much faith we have in the ability of man to improve his virtue (or lack there of). I think this is when it gets a little spiritual/religious for some, but I'm an atheist and still hold these beliefs so I don't think that is required.
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