As you can see in Figure 1.3, when we put these two dimensions together, we have a grid of possible ideologies. Individual Americans’ ideologies can be located on the grid, depending on how they feel about government intervention to ensure economic fairness and how they feel about government intervention to enforce policies based on religious views. For instance, a person who opposes intervention in either case would be located in the lower-left part of the grid (low on economic intervention and low on social intervention). The quadrants on the grid serve as the basis for describing the major American ideologies.
Figure 1.3 Value Conflict and Ideology
We have divided the grid into four quadrants here for the sake of simplicity. In reality, both dimensions are gradients; one person can be located higher or lower than another or farther left or right, even though both are located in the same quadrant. Each dimension is a matter of degree. Where do you think you would fall on the grid?
Conservatism
Conservatism is represented in the lower-right part of the grid. It combines a desire for government intervention to reinforce moral views such as support for prayer in schools and opposition to same-sex marriage with a desire not to have the government intervene in the economic realm to bring about fairness through regulation of business, taxes, and other policies. Conservatives argue that fairness in economic settings is better accomplished by allowing free markets to work without government intervention.
Liberalism
Liberalism is represented in the upper-left part of the grid. It combines a desire for governmental intervention to reduce economic inequality and inequalities between groups (especially between the majority and minority groups) with a desire not to have the government intervene to enforce policies based on religious views by regulating personal behaviors. Thus, liberals tend to favor higher tax rates for the wealthy than for the middle class and the poor and programs and policies to ensure equal treatment of women, members of ethnic and racial minorities, and gays and lesbians but tend to oppose, for example, prayer in schools or government bans on pornography.
Other Ideologies
Libertarianism opposes government intervention of any sort, favoring maximum individual freedom for people to make their own decisions, and so it falls in the lower-left part of the grid. It is a minor ideology in terms of its numbers of supporters (the Libertarian Party received only 3 percent of the votes in the 2016 presidential election), but it has played a more significant role in our political discourse than those numbers suggest. Ron Paul, a libertarian, ran fairly strongly in the Republican presidential primary elections in 2012, getting as much as 30 percent of the vote in some states; his appearances on college campuses, especially, drew large and lively crowds. His son, Rand Paul, also a libertarian, has served in the United States Senate since 2010 as a Republican.
The libertarian ideology is simple: On the economic issues dimension, libertarianism coincides with conservatism, opposing the use of government programs to promote economic equality, but on the social issues dimension, it coincides with liberalism, opposing government restrictions on personal behaviors. Libertarianism is in fact the survival of classical liberalism, discussed on page 14, and as such, is deeply rooted in the history of American thought.
conservatism In the United States, the ideology that supports government intervention on behalf of religious values but opposes intervention in the economic sphere.
liberalism In the United States, the ideology that opposes government intervention on behalf of religious values but supports intervention in the economic sphere to reduce inequality.
libertarianism In the United States, the ideology that opposes government intervention in any area of people’s lives.
The upper-right part of the grid, characterized by support for government intervention in both dimensions, is unlabeled because there is no well-organized American ideology that falls in that part of the grid. In many European and Latin American countries, this part of the grid is filled by Christian–Democratic ideology; for instance, Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, heads a Christian–Democratic party (see this chapter’s “Picture Yourself” feature for more on values and ideology in Germany). Christian Democrats favor government intervention in support of religious values and also favor governmental economic and regulatory intervention to ensure fairness.
This combination of positions has never caught on strongly in the United States. There are, of course, some Americans who fall into this part of the grid; they often describe themselves ideologically as economically liberal but culturally conservative. However, no single term captures this combination of positions, and no structured organizations, think tanks, or political parties represent it. It may be that such an ideology has had difficulty taking full hold in the United States because of Americans’ strong predisposition to individualism.
Two ideologies that originated in Europe but never took a strong enough hold in the United States to become significant are socialism and fascism. Because some American political figures are occasionally mislabeled as socialist or fascist, we will briefly introduce these ideologies here for the sake of clarification and to help you better understand how they are used in American political rhetoric.
Socialism developed out of conflicts between workers and employers in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—conflicts that were much more intense than similar conflicts in the United States. The socialist ideology at that time called for workers to take over the power of the state (either through elections or by revolution) and then use the state to control the economy by taking over and running all major industries. The end result was intended to be a society of equal citizens, with no economic or social distinctions among them. Socialism was a minor political force in the United States in the early twentieth century, reaching its high point in 1912 when its presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs, received 6 percent of the vote nationally. Today, “socialist” parties in Europe have largely abandoned the goal of having governments take over industry but rather are democratic, free-market parties that favor policies to reduce economic inequalities. In the United States today, some politicians on the left, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, use the term democratic socialist in this sense to describe themselves.
Particularly since the 2016 election, some Americans on the left are identifying themselves as democratic socialists, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was elected to the House in 2018.
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socialism An ideology that favors having the government take over most businesses and run them in the interest of social and economic equality.
fascism A nationalist, racist ideology of the 1930s that centered power on a single charismatic leader.
comparison Comparing aspects of a country’s government and politics to those aspects in other countries to better understand their causes.
historical analysis Examining the way politics has developed over time in a country in order to understand how its development has helped to shape its current form.
It has always been puzzling why there never was a large socialist party in the United States, given that throughout much of the twentieth century, socialism was a major