Here’s how I might characterize various political approaches.
Let’s say the problem is a disease introduced into Am cattle. Ranchers are spending and losing money, science has not yet come up with a counter to the disease or control of it, meat prices are sky-rocketing, and the economic effect is very bad with possible dietary consequences as people turn to questionable meat products.
The conservative approach would be to observe that such disease processes are normal in a population and if we hang in there, the disease will run its course and we’ll swing back to a balance. If we get radical, we’ll change the course of the industry and of diet forever. We will lose a lot economically, a lot of ranchers will go out of business, but that is the risk of the market place.
The liberal would want to ramp up the science to find a cure or prevention and shore up the industry, all involving government assistance and support. In addition, a raft of tougher laws on disease sources would be suggested.
A radical would want to wipe out the herd, import wild cattle from elsewhere and start all over.
An extremist would want to switch to a vegetarian diet or possibly, in a conspiracy-theorist approach, look for human agents that may have introduced the disease into the herd and punish them
None of these approaches is crazy and most of us, faced with such a situation, like the mad-cow disease a few years back, might contemplate any of them.
I’d like comments and much better definitions and examples.