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There have traditionally been two forms of bankruptcy that a cultural institution can declare. In the United States right now, these are referred to as "Chapter 13" and "Chapter 11". The exact definitions of these terms differ slightly from one legal jurisdiction to another, but in plain English the essence of Chapter 13 is that the institution maintains its integrity under the same management and tries to find a solution to its problems while continuing to perform its normal functions under outside supervision; whereas Chapter 11 involves selling off all its assets, firing all its managers and other employees, and ceasing to exist as a legal entity. One might call Chapter 13 a "top-down" solution to the problem of being seriously dysfunctional under the present system of operation and Chapter 11 a "bottom-up" solution. The idea that an institution can actually cease to exist entirely is a legal fiction, because even if it formally dissolves, its assets (income producing property both physical and intellectual) and its labor force (everyone who learned specialized skills while working for it) continue to exist. Ownership of the property passes to other institutions and the people go elsewhere to find new employment, but both will still bear the influence of the original collective entity for years into the future.In my humble opinion, it appears that all applications for the Chapter 13 form of moral bankruptcy can be labelled as "Conservative" and applications for the Chapter 11 form can be labled "Progressive", and that the former approach always makes the total problems the institution faces worse over the long haul, whereas the latter approach invariably enjoys limited success. The best examples of "Moral Chapter 13" over the last century are: a major increase in the power and intensity of theocratic fundamentalism within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; the replacement of traditional capitalist businesses with multi-national corporations that function like totalitrian socialist states both internally and externally and concentrate more and more of a society's financial wealth into fewer and fewer hands; and the metamorphosis of liberal constitutional democracy into totalitarian elitism in many different political entities all over the world. The best recent examples of "Moral Chapter 11" are: the world-wide network of human rights movements that collectively promote a universal humanistic ethical code but has no top-down organizational structure, formal ideology, or even a single name; mass-media entertainment -- music, drama, comedy, games, and even a lot of alleged news and op-ed material -- that does significant de-programming and re-programming of people's behavior patterns and personality structures with neither the performers nor the people who allegedly control them being fully aware of what messages are really being sent; the Internet and the home-computer technology that created it, which empower the individual user more than they empower big businesses and governments that think they "own" and "control" the institutions of the Information Age; and last but not least, an almost universal "spiritual alternatives movement" that integrates social science, humanistic philosophy, revisionist history, and what might be called "parapsychology" into a set of personal belief systems that can successfully compete with existing religions.
What I just said explains why there are so few traditional "conservatives" or "liberals" in positions of power in any of our institutions as we enter the 21st century. Both labels fit people and organizations that refuse to declare moral bankruptcy and are still trying to do things "as they were done in the good old days". This puts them in such serious conflict with their physical and social environment that they essentially can't function at all, so the few that still exist are practically invisible to the rest of us. For example, a "real" social and political conservative wouldn't use ANY electronic communications devices except in areas related to art and entertainment, because the person sending the message has too little control over who is receiving it or how they are responding to it. And a "real" liberal would feel the same because the sender would have too little control over the impact of the message on the recipient, which would preclude true "responsibility for the results of one's actions".
