This is true the world over. For example women in many states of America are fighting for their right for abortion.
When the world is prosperous, people tend to vote for more liberal policies. And when economy is struggling, people tend to vote more conservatively. So we see more authoritarian policies like these.
> Is this instance liberal (accepting of change) or conservative (hesitant of change)?
I don’t think this framing is very useful. Modern conservatives don’t have problems with change, they just want that change to go their way. They are perfectly able to innovate and push new doctrines or legal theories when it suits them. And on the other hand they do not care about preserving anything besides an idealised vision of “traditional values”, which are not as old as they seem.
Looking at the actual policies and arguments, the spectrum is between oligarchy (or dictatorship for the most extremes) and democracy. It makes much more sense that way.
> On one hand it seems liberal, wanting to see a change that gives individuals who might be subject of deepfakes more autonomy.
It’s also a significant limitation of personal freedom in the case of a victimless crime, which is anything but liberal.
Who you have described are reactionaries, not conservatives.
In fairness, some political parties who subscribe to reactionaryism operate under a capital C Conservative banner to try and muddy the waters, but to consider them conservative because of that is like considering the Democratic People's Republic of Korea democratic.
> Who you have described are reactionaries, not conservatives.
Indeed, that’s exactly what they are. But they prefer calling themselves conservatives. It’s better from a marketing perspective.
To be fair, there are not many politicians that could be called old-fashioned conservatives in the US. Most of them are a subset of the republican establishment and they were mostly wiped out in the last couple of years.
> to consider them conservative because of that is like considering the Democratic People's Republic of Korea democratic.
Definitely! Unfortunately, that’s how the semantics went, though. In the same way as what most people call “liberals” now are very different from who liberals used to be (they used to be all about capitalism and free enterprise, for example).
Magna carta only created rights for the oligarchs of the time, many of which have descents today with the same inherited wealth. You don't have to dig that deeply in the UK society to find the old aristocracy alive and well and still above others and usually the law.
There were things like the old Roman laws that defined the rights, privileges, and obligations of Roman citizens. Or the various constitutions of the old Greek poleis, which similarly guaranteed the freedom of the citizens. Or even the Hammurabi code, if you squint a bit.
“A decent job” is subject to interpretation, but I find very difficult to argue that the Magna Carta was the first, even if it was very significant.
When the world is prosperous, people tend to vote for more liberal policies. And when economy is struggling, people tend to vote more conservatively. So we see more authoritarian policies like these.