Conservatives and Liberals in an Alternate Universe

On the one hand you have real macho guys squiring girls who know how to dress -- while on the other you have unisexers who wish quite hard to be "above all that."

On the one hand you have people for whom have getting married, having kids, and handing on to them a pile of money is practically their job -- while on the other hand you have people for whom having a partner and children seem, even at best, not quite related to the way they see the world. (And let's not mention the ones who are aren't interested in, ah, procreative sex at all.)

On the one hand you have guys who always think their town and country is right, especially when it starts to fight -- while on the other you have people dedicated to larger, universal values embodied in international laws and organizations they see as the only hope for an end of war.

On the one hand, you have guys and girls who don't read a whole lot , but when they do read, want it red-blooded and wholesome -- while on the other you have people who make their living from spinning ever more complex and bizarre theories.

On the one hand you have people whose clothes say power and money -- while on the other hand you have people with pale indoor faces who dress in gloomy black.

On the one hand you have people who don't waste much time on guilt over being fortune's favorites -- and on the other hand you have people who talk constantly about the poor inheriting the earth (whether it's more than talk is debatable, however).

Conservative and liberals today? No! the nobility and the clergy in the Middle Ages. Read it over -- it all fits. Let's leave aside for the moment the details of the programs and ideologies. If you do, the clash of temperments represented by the modern conservative-liberal conflict seems to be another version of the rivalry of the knights and the clerks.