Conservative and Liberal

After poking around a little, I decided that I should point out the differences between the two major ideologies controlling American politics today. The fact that America, in my opinion, needs a third party on the national stage is another blog all together.

There seems to be a consensus that to the extreme right you have anarchy and to the extreme left you run into communism. The spectrum does not run circular, meaning if you keep going right you will not end up on the left.

The basic difference boils down to one thing, government. Liberals believe in big government and conservatives believe in limited government. It goes so much beyond, so I'll try to explain a little better. Conservatives believe in individual liberty, liberals believe in governmental control. Conservatives believe that people should be responsible for their own actions and their own lives. Liberals believe that people are a victim of society and need their lives regulated. A liberal will give a person a fish, a conservative will teach them how to fish. A liberal will give a person bread, a conservative will teach them how to bake. Liberals believe that people need everything provided for them, conservatives believe people are responsible for themselves. Conservative believe that hard work is rewarded, liberals believe that hard work should be taken. Conservatives believe that people are smart enough to make their own decisions, liberals believe that they are smarter than the people and should make the decisions for them. If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one, while the liberal tries to get guns banned. If a conservative doesn't like whats on TV, they change the channel while the liberal tries to ban the show. Basically, if a conservative doesn't like something, he chooses not to support it and the liberal tries to outlaw it. Liberals blame people for all the woes of the world, conservatives try to find the true cause of the woes.

There are a couple of current issues that helps illustrate this point. Health care and cap and trade. Both of these bills, take from those who produce and give to those who don't produce. The health care bill includes provisions to pay what you can, or more realistic pay what the government says you can afford. 5% of people need help with healthcare, but instead of correcting a flawed system, the liberal wants to control the healthcare for 300,000,000 people, because they know better. Because the humans are destroying the earth (based on flawed science), we need to monitor the consumption of America and take away from those who are "polluting" and give to those who aren't. Liberals want to set up smart grids and smart boxes to make sure we don't use to much energy.

The problem is the two major parties in America are all moving to the left, way left. The Democrat party is all about socialism and now the extreme left might as well be the Communist Party of America. The republican party is moving towards the center, the moderate republicans are just the old school democrats. Will this bring the injection of voters the Libertarian party needs to make serious inroads on creating a three party system in America or is the Shadow Party emerging?