Understanding political labels & ideologies

Labels like liberal and conservative get thrown around a lot, and are very frequently
misused and misunderstood. This study guide is a supplement to Ch. 16 that is intended to
give you a basic overview of what these terms actually mean. Once you have a good
understanding of this terminology, you should be able to use political labels correctly and to
develop the ability to ascertain when they are being used properly or not in news
commentaries, on social media, etc.

The primary differences among these various political perspectives are rooted in different
ideas about the role that the government should play in peoples individual lives and in
our social institutions (family, politics, education, health care, religion, media, economics,
etc.).

It is also important to understand that while Democrats are generally liberal and
Republicans are generally conservative, there is a wide range of belief systems among
members of each party. Moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans might agree more
with each other about a particular policy issue than they might with people who are more
extremely liberal or conservative within their own party, for instance.

Liberals/Progressives (sometimes called left-wing):

Liberals generally believe that society functions best with a combination of individual
responsibility AND social responsibility: people should work hard and play by the
rules, but they also deserve to receive help from the rest of society when they are
dealing with bad things that happen to them that are beyond their control, or when
they have children, elderly people, disabled people, etc. in their families who need
more care than they can manage to provide on their own.
Liberals are much more comfortable with social and cultural change than
conservatives are. In fact they are frequently working to create such changes; for
instance, the civil rights movement, the womens movement, the gay rights
movement, etc. are all liberal in the sense that they are trying to improve and expand
peoples rights to live their own lives as they please and to be free from
discrimination. Liberals also generally dont mind having a heterogeneous,
multicultural society; they think that it makes things more fun and interesting, and
allows more freedom for people to create, maintain, and enjoy their own subcultures
and countercultures (remember those terms from Ch. 3?). For liberals, having a wide
range of races, ethnicities, languages, sexual orientations, religions, etc. in our
society makes us stronger, not weaker.
When liberals work for cultural or social change, they are generally doing so with the
belief that the government should be actively involved in trying to solve or intervene
 in social problems. So for instance, if they want certain groups of people to no longer
be discriminated against, they will work to have the government pass anti-
discrimination laws; if people are dying because they cant afford health care, they
will work to create policies and programs that will help them pay for it (ie Medicare,
Medicaid, and Obamacare, all of which we will talk about more later this semester).
While liberals are generally in favor of capitalism, they are very critical of the
excesses of capitalism; they want government rules and regulations in place to force
businesses and industries limit the harm that they can do to their workers, to the
environment, and to the economy itself (like the Great Recession that started in 2009
that we are still trying to climb out of, which was triggered by extreme risk-taking in
the banking/finance industry).
Liberals are also generally in favor of government policies and programs that help
alleviate poverty and provide people with unemployment and retirement insurance
(ie Social Security), all of which help people to survive the ups and downs of living in
a market economy (ie, losing your job, getting old or sick and being unable to work,
etc.).

Conservatives (right-wing)
There are two basic types of conservatives: cultural conservatives and economic
conservatives. These two types often (but not always) overlap, and sometimes they
actually conflict with one another! Generally speaking, conservatives of both types
do NOT like major cultural or social changes and/or government involvement in how
social institutions function.
Economic conservatives:
Have a strong belief that capitalism/free enterprise should NOT be regulated by
the government in terms of employee rights, workplace safety, environmental
impacts, etc. Sometimes this belief is based on the idea that it shouldnt be the
governments job to help you if you are down on your luck or mess something up
in your life; sometimes it is more because they feel that everything the
government does actually makes social problems worse, not better.
Economic conservatives are very strongly opposed to taxes in general, and want
the government to spend as little money as possible. Some economic
conservatives feel that the government simply has no right to take some of their
income or profits and use it for social programs such as those described above at
all. Less often, some economic conservatives may feel that public schools,
libraries, parks, law enforcement and firefighting, etc. should be abolished
because they are paid for with tax money.
Cultural conservatives:
Cultural conservatives are generally against major and/or rapid cultural changes;
they think our (Western, American) culture is excellent/superior the way it is
 A key component of cultural conservatism is the religious right or Christian
right--fundamentalists who interpret the Bible literally and want it to be the sole
basis for our government. These conservatives do not make a distinction
between their religious perspective and American social structure and culture
they want to base our social and cultural systems on Gods law as they interpret
it and believe that the Bible (again, as they interpret it) should be the basis for
how all of societys institutions (review the list above) are structured.
Because of these strongly held religious beliefs, which include a belief that God
commands men and women to follow strict gender roles and that only
heterosexual nuclear families are acceptable (more on families, religion, and
gender roles in Chs. 11 & 12), cultural conservatives have historically fought hard
against allowing women to vote, have paid jobs, hold public office, and have
access to birth control. Currently, many religious-right activists fight against laws
allowing same-sex marriages (marriage equality); this stems from the same belief
that all families should be structured alike and that men and women should have
different and separate responsibilities. Cultural conservatives have also fought
against desegregation and mixed-race marriages (and ending slavery, if you go
back far enough).
Different kinds of conservative beliefs are sometimes incompatible with one another!
Conservatives in general want to keep the government small and keep
government spending down, BUT sometimes they also want to use the rule of
law to enforce certain moral and religious beliefs. A small, non-invasive
government, for instance, would not be making and enforcing laws deciding who
can get married to whom.
This often creates tension between economic conservatives, who mostly care
about free markets and are mostly interested in keeping government out of
economic behavior, and cultural conservatives, who are more interested in
enforcing government policies that implement their religious beliefs.
It is also sometimes the case that conservatives who are concerned that the
government is too invasive and too involved in our lives and our businesses will
be VERY upset if government programs that benefit THEMtax breaks, small
business loans, agricultural or oil industry subsidies, disaster relief, or money for
job-creation plans, for instanceget cut in order to decrease government
spending.
Conservatives also tend to be more hawkishin favor of military intervention
and spendingthan liberals. Defense (military) spending is the second-largest
part of the federal budget (Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are the largest;
these three items fluctuate from year to year, however) at roughly 20% of the
total. (Lots more on the federal budget here, if youre interestedscroll down for
 a basic pie chart of spending.) Needless to say, this does not help keep the
federal government small or help keep taxes down.

Moderates are in the middle of conservatives and liberals:

A LOT of Americans self-identify as moderatesthey agree with conservatives
on some things, liberals on others
These people are sometimes referred to as swing voters who are the key to
winning electionsthey go back and forth between Democrats and Republicans
depending on how much they like individual candidates and their ideas.

Not all political perspectives fit neatly within the liberal/conservative dichotomy:

Libertarians generally believe that we should keep government out of pretty much
EVERYTHING. They are socially liberal, but economically conservative, meaning
that they believe that each person has the right to live his/her life any way they
choose as long as they respect the equal right of others to do the same, and that
free market capitalism creates a society with the most freedom and liberty: free
markets and free minds."
This means that governments should stay out of people's personal AND economic
choices; for instance, libertarians believe that the government has no right say who
should or shouldnt have the right to marry OR to regulate businesses and economic
activities.
As with liberals and conservatives, there is a very wide spectrum of beliefs within the
libertarian movementdifferent factions emphasize different issues relating to the
role that the government should play (or, more accurately, NOT play) in society.
They will sometimes concede that liberals support for social programs is well-
intentioned, but insist that government interference in anything inevitably
backfires and just causes more problems.
They get very frustrated with both the religious right, which they feel tries to use
religion to constrain peoples personal liberties, and conservatives, who are often
in favor of massive government subsidies to industries and huge amounts of
military spending, which interfere with free markets and increase the power of
the state.

Radicals are people who want massive change NOWthey want to completely do
away with the existing system (political, economic, etc) and create a new one.
This is very different from liberals & conservatives who both want to work within
the existing system.
Review the textbook discussion of socialism and democratic socialism , which
are considered radical in the U.S. but are pretty mainstream ideas elsewhere in
 the world. They are NOT the same thing as communism (see p. 456). In a truly
socialist economic system, the government OWNS and CONTROLS the means
of production (like factories and farmland). In democratic socialist countries, the
government ensures access to things like child care and health care by owning
and controlling those systems and PAYING FOR them via tax money. People
who live in these countries (generally in Europe) pay higher taxes than we do, but
often feel that this is a fair trade-off for ensuring that everyone has access to
basic needs.

Reactionaries are radical conservatives who want to return to an imaginary past,

where everyone supposedly knew their place, and their societys culture was uniform
and strictly enforced.
Dominion theology, aka Christian reconstructionism, is an extreme religious-right
ideology that wants to return the U.S. to Old Testament laws.
White supremacist groups (like the KKK, Aryan Nation, etc.), militias, and the like
are also reactionaries who believe that the U.S. is not only a Christian Nation
but also that white Christian (as they define it) people are the only race blessed
by God and therefore should have control of all of our nations institutions. These
groups are extremely patriarchal (male-dominated and extremely sexist) and
often have a violent streak and can be very dangerous, at least on a small scale.

What do some of these different groups have in common?

Liberals and conservatives (and probably most libertarians) are all willing to work
within the existing sociopolitical system they arent trying to create radical change
or overthrow the government, etc. but rather want to improve and reform it (the three
groups do however have very different ideas of how to accomplish this!).
Radicals and reactionaries want to work outside of or take over the system they
argue that system itself is broken (radical means getting to the root) and needs to
be completely replaced. These groups may be either violent or very peaceful,
however.