Is The Government Better Than Conservatism?

The original intended purpose for a government system was to provide laws that would maintain a near peaceful society. However, since there are many people in the world with different point of views, there will be many debates regarding the use of the government to intervene with many aspects of society. The two most used terms that are very carelessly thrown around to categorize these points of views are liberalism and conservatism. Liberalism is the ideology of trying to reach equality with personal freedoms, however also for government intervention when it comes to the economy. These people feel that the government should only involve in the way the country spends money, however when it comes to how the people chose to live their lives, the government should have little to no say. Conservatism is a close opposite of liberalism since the people that associate themselves with conservatism will oppose government intervention in the economy, but support intervention with personal freedoms. Conservatism upholds many traditional values, which would lead to the need for
the government to regulate the people, much like the way a parent has to teach and dictate what a child can and cannot do. There are two more ideologies that can be considered as a hybrid of the two most predominant ones, these are known as libertarianism and populism. Libertarianism is more of a hands off type of society where laissez-faire and the expansion of individual freedoms are supported. People of this ideology want the government to not much or any intervention when it comes to the economy and the way people live their life. Populism is the exact opposite because it supports government intervention in every aspect of economy and individualistic freedoms. Based on the results of the self-test, I am categorized almost directly in the middle of all four ideologies. I can’t say that I was very surprised when the results were shown because I believe in a system where government intervention can be necessary at times, but not always needed around the clock. If I was ever given a chance to decide how the government should be run, it would be very similar to many other utopian ideas, and as we know now, utopian ideas rarely work. My answers for the test were very back in forth where the smiley face would travel always to the right and up, which therefore landed me in the middle of the chart. Seeing the progression of the smiley face, along with the position of the face made my result expected. Had the graph been hidden from view or only showed at the end of the test, maybe there would be a chance that I wouldn’t expect my result. Even though my results were expected, the quiz still showed itself to be very weak and unreliable.
One of the main places of weakness was the fact that there was no middle answer, or “gray area”. The test forces the test taker to choose between two completely opposite choices and does not give a choice of compromise. Many people like myself would have chosen to compromise between the opposing viewpoints instead of strictly choosing one side in favor of the other. Not only was the test too specific, but there were not enough questions to accurately decide exactly where a person can fall on the spectrum of the four ideologies. One of the main things I know about politics, is that it is the art of doing what is possible at the moment given the circumstances. As most of us know, anything is possible, so a mere set twenty questions would not be even close to covering everything there is about
government. Many people would agree that a person’s surroundings will affect the way that individual thinks. I can agree and disagree with that statement using myself as an example. My parents are more traditional where they don’t accept homosexuality and have varied thoughts about the gun laws. Most of the ways I think about society are very different from them, however, my parents and I do share some similar views about the way the economy should be run. Although my parents are a good indicator of my political views, I actually spend a lot more time at school where I am then exposed to many more different versions of the four ideologies. Since the school does not like to meddle with political affairs or offend anyone, (with the exception of my U.S history teach who really didn’t care about anyone’s opinion) , school still is not a main factor in what my political ideology is. What I believe is the most common factor in figuring out the origin of political values, is social media. Social media has given our population access to see everything that is happening around the nation and the world. Take for example the Orlando shooting that happened recently, because of this situation, many people are reconsidering the gun laws. This differs to how it was around 2 or 3 years ago where, especially in Texas, the gun laws were considered useless or not helpful. The power that social media has on our community is incomparable to any other factor because it dominates our society today.