The Essence of Political Groups
In the United States, there are a few major schools of political thought. I’m afraid that their major claims are not well understood, so consider this post an attempt to clarify the school’s true positions and where they ultimately take society.
American Liberalism: American Liberalism emphasizes individual liberty and well-being. Essentially, American Liberals believe in natural rights and want to protect them. They believe in free speech, free press, free assembly, etc. They also support free enterprise and markets, generally speaking. American Liberals support these things not just because it is a good policy or because they are necessary to the proper functioning of democracy, but because people have real rights to these things.
American Liberals want to mitigate badness while maintaining strong levels of autonomy in human action. Regulations and taxes should be instituted at the efficient level, whatever that is. Taxes should not be punitive, or for the purpose of large scale income redistribution. Rather taxes should pay for infrastructure, education, and to provide charitable welfare services for the poor.
Conservatism: Conservatism does not couch its rhetoric in universalizing ideas, like the other main schools of thought. Rather, Conservatism is parochial and loves tradition. Conservatism makes the important observation that entropy is a real force in human life. Sometimes in history, a society reaches a zenith, a peak of goodness, truth, beauty and order.
But because of “social entropy” the center cannot hold, and these peaks cannot last. Conservatives, therefore, want to protect the valuable traditions of their society from collapse–for the benefit of everyone. This explains why the “right” in various countries have such different social and economic policy prescriptions. Right-wing groups in Europe often endorse mercantilist interventionism and guild-like worker groups, whereas US conservatives endorse the free-market ideology of the idealized US past.
Progressivism: Progressivism is fundamentally the ideology that wants to move society forward. Progressives identify various social, cultural, economic, and political problems and they just want to solve them. The problem is that the masses are mostly not progressive, and neither are the main institutions.
Therefore a relatively small group of enlightened people have to push society forward by whatever means are available. This means taking positions in academia, government, think tanks, NGOs, lobbying groups, and education.
The problems they have identified include income inequality, racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and consumerism. These problems can be solved, and however much power the government has to absorb to do it, it will be worth it.
Historically, ahead of the curve people have always pushed society forward in ways that seemed counterintuitive to non-progressives, so we should trust them. While they are a fairly small clique of people who want a broad range of powers, we should trust them because unlike private actors, they obviously have society’s best interests at heart.
