From what I understand, “liberal” and “conservative” refers mostly to social issues, while the “left” refers to socialism, the “center” to Keynesian capitalism, and the “right” to free market capitalism.
In America, liberal and left are often regarded as one and the same because the Democratic Party advocates fiscal centrism (which is seen as socialism in right-wing America) along with social liberalism, while the Republican Party combines conservative and right-wing values.
But they are not exactly the same. You can be a liberal and support free markets, though personally I think social justice and equality is impossible without some sort of redistribution of wealth because the nature of capitalism is to give majorities (which tend to be conservative) more power. Advocating cutting welfare would generally be both a conservative and a right-wing thing to do.
Conversely, you can be a conservative and a socialist or even a communist. This “third positionist” mentality is very popular in Latin America and the black community. You’ll find people who believe strongly in a welfare state, yet hate other racial groups and gays, oppose abortion and support capital punishment. Again though, I’d argue it’s somewhat contradictory since a system that values some groups over others will ultimately manifest economic inequality.
Liberal and left = Democratic socialist
Conservative and left = Third positionist
Liberal and right = Libertarian
Conservative and right = Reactionary
IDK how many blacks fall into this category, though it is an interesting observation, however, my point is, I think African Americans are almost overwhelmingly Democrats, are they not?
Some of these alliances are just accidents of history. Ideology is not always rational or consistent. The Republican and Democratic parties famously swapped positions on racial discrimination.
It is entirely possible for the abortion issue to have come out reversed, with liberals favoring the right of the unborn to the fullest expression of their individual potential, while conservatives would support a woman’s property rights in her own body.
No, liberal/conservative and left/right are not generally used that way. Usually those distinctions are considered to be equivalent. When it’s necessary to make a distinction, the usual one is to distinguish between social liberalism and conservatism and economic liberalism and conservatism. In general in the U.S., someone who is both socially and economically liberal is just called liberal, someone who is both socially and economically conservative is just called conservative, someone who is socially liberal and economically conservative is called libertarian, and there’s no standard name for someone who is socially conservative and economically liberal.
Any more I’m not sure any of those labels mean very much except in describing a small portion of the “straight party ticket” voters out there. Most people tend to be all across the board depending on the exact subject being discussed. Where they fall on the majority of the current issues tends to determine how they self-identify and how others would usually identify them.
Democrats and republicans have never swapped places on racial issues. Republicans still believe that blacks and other minorities are capable of becoming viable assets in our community, Democrats still believe blacks are not capable of supporting themselves.
In American politics we don’t really have the axes like the OP described. What we have is two large coalitions each of which contain a number of factions. There’s the left/liberal/Democrat group and the right/conservative/Republican group.
Keep in mind that pop culture likes things to be very well-defined. To the point of arch-stereotypes. Consequently 99.999% of ‘politics’ you’ll see in fictional TV or film will consist of liberal Democrats and conservative (and evil :rolleyes:) Republicans. And since non-fiction, or what used to be called ‘news’, is mostly just info-tainment these days, they tend to broadly generalize as well. Often to the point of skewing things prejudicially!
It’s not just pop culture. All discussions of issues virtually demand that someone select a label or allow one to be applied to their position. Refusing to do so is cat-called as “waffling” or indecisiveness or harsher things.
What was traditionally called a “liberal”, sometimes referred to today as a “classical liberal”, is someone supporting individual freedom in both social and economic realms, and generally against militarism, state-enforced religion, censorship, and trade barriers. That’s how the word was used by Ludwig von Mises, for example.
In the United States, the word “liberal” gradually separated from this definition. A century ago, there wasn’t really a “liberal” political movement. There was the progressive movement. With progress as its ideal, it embraced state power in some areas (prohibition, eugenics), but supported increased individual freedom in others areas (women’s suffrage). During the New Deal, liberalism, leftism, and progressivism all got merged into FDR’s vision of a much larger and more powerful state, while some of the old baggage like prohibition got dumped. FDR and other Democrats at the time had little interest in pushing for issues such as legalized abortion, but those gradually became a necessary part of being a liberal.
Democrats already believe that blacks and other minorities are assets in our communities. Some Republicans think they might be viable someday, but right now they are all on welfare and/or unemployed.
TL;DR: Political Scientist textbook author Kenneth Janda et al have decided that a government has three major duties: (a) Preserving order; (b) Preserving liberty; and (c) Ensuring equality. They believe that all functions of government can be categorized into one of these pigeonholes.
They note that Order conflicts with Liberty, requiring trade-offs to be made. They note that Equality conflicts with Liberty, requiring trade-offs to be made. But Order and Equality don’t conflict, therefore you can have both without trade-offs.
If you arrange these three functions in order of importance, you can get six different orders according to your opinions of their relative importance. But since Order and Equality don’t conflict, there are really just four effectively distinct ways to arrange them in order of importance. These four orders define four major political philosophies: (1) Populists (which he calls Communitarians in more recend editions); (2) Libertarians; (3) Conservatives; (4) Liberals. He arranges these on a two-dimensional set of axes, which I attempt to illustrate in Post #17 there. Take a look and see what you make of it.
That’s cute, but Catholics are spread out across the political compass, and there are people who fit into that quarter of the compass who aren’t Catholic.
Oh, firmly tongue-in-cheek. Maybe that didn’t come across.
But I do think that, generally speaking, Americans that fall in the socially-conservative fiscally-liberal bent tend to be religious. And evangelicals often have more of a economic conservatism/bootstrappy mindset than Catholics (the latter often having a pretty strong sense of “social justice” - see the current Pope for example).
Fully an IMHO position, of course, without a cite to back it up.
