**Liberal: **believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all. It is the duty of the government to alleviate social ills and to protect civil liberties and individual and human rights. Believe the role of the government should be to guarantee that no one is in need. Liberal policies generally emphasize the need for the government to solve problems.
Conservative: believe in personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, individual liberty, traditional American values and a strong national defense. Believe the role of government should be to provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own goals. Conservative policies generally emphasize empowerment of the individual to solve problems.
I picked “other” based on your definition. I believe each person has the responsibility to do their damndest to make something of themselves and contribute to society. I also believe the government has a responsibility to provide a substantial net for people who try their best and come across dire circumstances regardless.
I tend to align Democratic though as their philosophy of having a wider net is more palatable to me than the Republican philosophy of removing the net as much as possible.
I guess that I lean to the “liberal” side, though I hate that label. (For example, I doubt that I would ever vote for the Liberal Party of Australia.) But a few comments:
Those two aren’t the same thing: I strongly support equal opportunity, but I don’t want a world where everyone was equal.
I’d say rather that there are some problems that need to be solved by the government, because they can’t be solved by individual action. (And one example is national defense, which even conservatives support )
Of course, there’s a conflict between “limited government” and “strong national defense” which was observed by conservatives as different as Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower. It seems very odd to me that American conservatives today think it’s essential for the U.S. to have a military more expensive than pretty well all the rest of the world’s militaries.
In addition, not all conservatives support “traditional American values” because not all conservatives are American.
Though in practice not when that empowerment conflicts with “traditional American values”, e.g., heterosexual marriage.
I don’t ascribe to any particular idealogy. Between the Tea Baggers, the Occupy Wall Street hippy dirtbags, the 1%er overpaid corporate douchebags and the pretentious Hollywood limosine liberals I can’t decide which “America” I hate more.
I think you are confusing “traditional American values” with “traditional family values”. “Traditional family values” is a slogan commonly used by social and religious conservatives. When I think of “traditional American values”, I think of liberty, justice, freedom, responsibility – values often taught in grade school that made the country the way it is today. Either that, or I may be misinterpreting what this website says:
My opinion is that “traditional American values” is different from “traditional family values”. “Traditional American values” is the stuff that American kids are taught in grade school. “Traditional family values” is the stuff that kids, including American kids, are taught at home, especially if they have traditionalist or socially and religiously conservative parents.
Other: I believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity for all. It is the duty of the government to protect civil liberties and human rights. I recognize the need for the government to solve some problems. I also believe in personal responsibility, limited government as is practicable, somewhat free markets with effective government regulation and oversight, individual liberty as outlined in the constitution and legal precedent, traditional American values and a strong national defense. I strongly believe that all rights not reserved for the federal government belong to the states, and those not enumerated in the constitution are reserved for the people.
Based on your definition, too, I voted “other.” I self-identify as “liberal” or “left-leaning,” but I’m probably most closely a mix of liberal and libertarian. drewtwo99’s ideology summarizes mine pretty well, although I will not sign off on “traditional American values” without an enumeration of them.
I consider myself a liberal, but your definition of Liberal is simply a conservative caricature. Also, your definition of Conservative is simply what conservatives say they’re for. Many conservatives, in practice, are not for these things at all.
For example, when conservatives talk about personal responsibility, they generally mean it for others, not themselves, for whom there’s always an exemption, or should be. They want limited government, except for when they don’t. I don’t even know what the heck ‘traditional American values’ even means, although it sounds like another way to exclude others. And freedom is just another word for the ability to shirk one’s responsibilities.
Other: I don’t believe in the government doing things for us or to us. This is a democracy. The government is us. I believe there are things we want done. Sometimes we do them through governmental means; sometimes we do them through other means. I support using whichever means work best to do things I think should get done.
For clarity, in my post #13 above, when I wrote: your definition of Liberal is simply aconservative caricature, I meant ‘a conservative’s caricature of a liberal’.
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