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Liberalism And Conservatism

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The most popular or most widely known ideologies of government are liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and fascism. Liberalism and conservatism are the more popular ideologies in the United States with socialism and fascism being more popular in Europe within extreme governments. Liberalism is defined as: “an ideology positing that the most important goal of politics is to help individuals develop their capacities to the fullest. To this end, people should be regulated and aided by governments as little as possible, so that they will learn from the experience of being responsible for their own decisions” (Shively, p. G-5, 2014). Liberalism has its roots in Europe, developing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries after the fall of …show more content…

Conservatives believe that society should have order and structure and everyone should know where they stand with each other. In comparison of liberalism and conservatism, liberals are “suspicious of power and seek to limit it, conservatism sees power as binding and shaping its holder in good ways” (Shively, p. 32, 2014). Socialism is an off-shoot of liberalism. Socialism is defined, by Shively (p. G-9, 2014) as “an ideology positing that society consists of classes (groups of people similarly placed economically) constantly in conflict. To create a just society in which people are equal, the working class should take over the state and direct all industries.” When the liberal sentiment began to weaken in the labor groups and classes, the belief that the government should protect against sickness, unemployment, length of work day and week, and work-place safety began to take a solid footing within the more liberal groups. Socialism retained the liberal belief that all persons deserve equal treatment by the state and have the ability to develop themselves. However, socialism did neither believe people could develop as individuals nor were socialists suspicious of the concentration of power. Socialists believed people were in their respective classes and developed within their class (socialites, aristocracy, intellectuals, workers, etc.,), not to leave their class. Individuals do not develop their own views of

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