Have Progressives And Conservatives Switched Ideologies?

I think this George Will column is the column of the year so far. I hadn't linked to it because I've been thinking about it so much and wanted to shape my own thoughts around it.

Will argues that the rapid advances in technology in our society has created a social and market "churn" that can be unnerving. Things that we've come to know and love are being replaced at a rapid rate (the Sears catalog, Borders bookstores, Encyclopedia Britannica) by new technologies.

The future, according to the free market, becomes very uncertain. And Will argues that the constant "creative destruction" in our country has caused political activists to actually switch places on the ideological axis:

America now is divided between those who find this social churning unnerving and those who find it exhilarating. What Virginia Postrel postulated in 1998 in “The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress” - the best book for rescuing the country from a ruinous itch for tidiness — is even more true now. Today’s primary political and cultural conflict is, Postrel says, between people, mislabeled “progressives,” who crave social stasis, and those, paradoxically called conservatives, who welcome the perpetual churning of society by dynamism.

Stasists see Borders succumb to e-books (and Amazon) and lament the passing of familiar things. Dynamists say: Relax, reading is thriving. In 2001, the iPod appeared, and soon stores such as Tower Records disappeared.

I thought about Will's column again today when reading this post, which relates how people are making lots of money creating "free" games.

Progressives seek a fair economic system. The uncertainty of the current economic system, driven by technology, increases the chances of unfair treatment. Thus, statism.