Political Terms

Definitions and Links

Ideology

Liberal

Conservative

Discussion of political forces in the United States and Internationally revolves around a small groups of words that need to be more clearly defined and differentiated

Ideology is the term that describes the intellectual side of political movements, as well as many often related religious and social movements. It can mean simple the total of propositions that people identified with a particular political groups or movement generally believe. But it can also mean an organized system of ideas that informs a movement or is rejected systematically by those that oppose it. Traditional communist parties had the most organized systems of thought in recent times. All absolutist parties tend to aspire to the kind of integrated systems of belief, explanation and policy that characterized communism (less organized systems characterized states that called themselves "communist"). At the other extreme, it is hard to describe systematically the ideologies of "Republicans" or "Democrats". However, groups within these parties, usually at the extremes may have fairly developed ideologies. Groups outside the mainstream, such as the libertarians, may have much more developed systems of thought. Lack of ideology is a striking weakness of major parties in the eyes of the young and idealistic. However, this lack probably is necessary to actually win elections.

Ideology can have two quite different sense; the one selected determines whether it adds to or detracts from society. In the first sense, it is opinion masquerading as science. Nazism, Marxist, and Maoism were no more sciences than Freudianism or Christian Science, but their followers treated them as though they were an adequate basis for thinking in a wide variety of social, and at times even biological or physical, fields. In a second sense, ideology simply means that assortment of contingent knowledge and theory that serves as the basis of thought or action by an individual, party, or organization. Clearly, the world needs more use and refinement of ideology in the second sense. Ideology in the first sense, however, was the bane of the twentieth century and bids fair to be bane of the twenty-first.

Liberal and conservative are the two strains characterizing the two haves of the spectrum of political thought in democratic polities. A liberal has traditionally been one assuming that meaningful change is both desirable and achievable. His weakness is an inclination to too easily accept such a range of behaviors and beliefs that society is in danger of slipping into formlessness. In such a society, patriotism becomes foolishness, for life seems to be risked to preserve nothing. A conservative sees change as both dangerous and probably wicked. He is particularly leery of propositions that humanity can be improved, or that new laws will be better than old. He is a preservationist and conserver. He doubts the intentions of those who claim to serve mankind selflessly. His weakness is the tendency to resist change for its own sake, to willfully fail to accept change that is obviously an improvement over what went before, to speciously advance arguments that serve to retard progress.

A fundamentalist is a reactionary who believes much as a conservative does, but who rejects much of the change that has occurred since a posited idyllic state in the past and the present. Religious sects, whether Christian, Islamic, or some others, are fundamentalist when their doctrines support return to what is posited to have been the original state of their tradition before the accretions of history. Their "original state" is often historically doubtful, but firmly believed for all that. They may, in fact, be revolutionary, for some believe that almost any actions can be justified, if they help to strip away the accumulation of error that has built up in the intervening years. Unlike conservatives, fundamentalists are seldom open to argument. The conservative, after weighing the present against the future, will often opt for the future. (For example, many conservatives have come to accept change in the status of women or African-Americans as positive developments.) In so far as change affects the core of his belief, the fundamentalist cannot accept such change.

A moderate, on the other hand, is an "on the other hand" person who sees good in many alternatives, and strives to weigh the benefits of each. Compared to fundamentalists and radicals, most liberals and conservatives are moderates.

Categories that contrast with the moderate are Neocons (see definition), libertarians, the "hard right", and the radicals. The first three are ideological "sects" or positions too often simply identified with the conservative side of the aisle. Libertarians are particularly important. Although they do not achieve great numbers in elections, their positions appear to be widely accepted by the man in the street. In their insistence on liberty and the absence of restriction, they belong with the liberals. But in their insistence on reducing government to the bare minimum, on doing away with taxes, on extreme privatization of social services, they are far to the "right" of most conservatives. The "hard right" agrees with them on some issues, but is diametrically opposed to libertarians on social issues. They wish to preserve or enhance laws against abortion, to allow the teaching of religion in schools, etc. They stand for a strong military establishment, something libertarians abhor. Radical is the hardest category to pin down. Although the libertarian and the fundamentalist are radical in their own way, the term is generally reserved for persons pressing a "hard left" agenda that would allow for the growth of a larger government that would provide more social services, that would tax to achieve more income equality, and that would generally accept the libertarian agenda on social issues.

The use of names and categories and political groupings has changed over the years in often surprising ways, eventually producing strange anomalies. For example, the "greens", or of all of those who emphasize ecology and the environment (new senses of both). In their interest, the preservation and conservation of nature, of "respect" for the earth, they are hard line conservatives. But their agenda in most other respects is liberal, even radical. Equally anomalous are those "right-wingers" whose extreme capitalism verges on the libertarian. These are devoted "free-traders", "Naftaites", and oppose environmentalism as weak-minded fanaticism. They believe in the more immigration the better, "immigrants are what made America great". Yet their single-minded adherence to capitalism was revolutionary in the past, and still seems that way to many conservative Americans. The older conservative social agenda, the preservation of "American Values" does not seem to rest too easily in this bed.

Moving from the theoretical to the actual political realm as seen in American legislatures, and often echoed by legislatures throughout the world, the right and the left represent politically expedient combinations of conservatives of many hues on the one side (vaguely the Republican Party in the U.S.) and liberals of many hues (vaguely the Democratic Party in the U.S.). Within these two tents are clustered a few who in their hearts are libertarians, neocons, radicals or others. They can influence their party's agenda, but only seldom do they manage to capture it, and then only briefly.