BLOG 15, February 17, 2012 - POLITICS, A SIMPLE VIEW

CONSERVATIVES 

Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union (one of our era’s few highly successful labor organizations) and now a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Richman Center, makes five points about conservatives: 

• “They appreciate more instinctively the need for fiscal balance.” 
• “They understand people’s more innate belief in hard work and individual responsibility and see government as too often lacking that understanding.” 
• “They are more suspicious from a philosophical point of view of big government as an answer to many issues.” 
• “They respect the need for private sector economic growth.” 
• “They are more pro-small business.” 

LIBERALS 

Liberals recognize the real problems facing the poor, the hardships resulting from economic globalization and the socially destructive force of increasing inequality.

Liberals do not dismiss the apparent scientific consensus that human beings contribute significantly to climate change. 

Liberals stand with those most in need, and believe in the inclusion of such previously marginalized groups as Blacks, Hispanics, Women, Homosexuals, and more recently Muslims. 

SOCIALISTS  

State Socialists: advocate for the nationalization of the means of production, distribution and exchange.  

Social democrats: advocate for redistributive taxation and government regulation of capital within the framework of a market economy. 

Libertarian Socialists: advocate for direct worker's control of the means of production without relying on state power to achieve such an arrangement, while also opposing parliamentary politics and state ownership over the means of production. 

CAPITALISTS 

Citizens are entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labour and the benefits of their economic pursuits. 

There are those Capitalists wh0 believe that governments should get out of the way and allow economic freedom to prevail. Others believe that a government’s role is setting the right rules for success. 

PLURALISTS 

All citizens of a country will flourish under responsible leadership in a true democracy, which embraces some combination of the political and socio-economic principals of the various ideals.