Learn Liberty: Antony Davies: 'Who Favors More Freedom: Liberals or Conservatives?'

Source:Learn Liberty- Antony Davies, talking about Liberals and Conservatives.

"Prof. Antony Davies analyzes the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives.  He then proposes an alternative method of viewing political issues, which looks at policies and their respective impact on individual freedom.  Prof. Antony Davies concludes that the conventional liberal/conservative dichotomy encourages us to ignore first principles, and hence, overlook contradictory views.

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From Learn Liberty

One of the things I don't like about American politics is that it tries to take complicated issues and philosophies and tries to divide them into two factions as if those factions are in sink on all of the issues and that the left and right is only made up to two political factions that agree on everything and all of the issues even though we do have a left and a right and so does every other country at least in the democratic world.

But the left and right are basically just the two ends of the political spectrum. But both sides of the political spectrum have multiple and diverse factions on both sides. It's not just About liberal vs conservative, but the left and the right where the left is made up of more than just Liberals, but the left has Progressives, Social Democrats/Democratic Socialists, as well as Communists. And the left has people who describe their politics as Socialist-Liberal or Socialist-Libertarian. People who Are socialist or social democratic on economic and perhaps foreign policy, but liberal-libertarian on social issues.

Whereas the right has Conservatives or Conservative-Libertarians, but they have people who are more classically libertarian and they have people who are neoconservative and religiously conservative. (Which is different from politically conservative) People who may be conservative on economic policy, but more statist on social issues and foreign policy.

So left vs right is not just about liberal vs conservative. And Liberals and Conservatives at least Liberals and Conservatives in a classical sense generally don't view themselves as liberal vs conservative in the sense that they are enemies, but competitors who have competing political ideologies. But not out to destroy the other side and they also have more in common than I believe Americans tend to think.

And they both have the same goals and see their philosophy as the best to achieve their goals which is individual freedom for all Americans. The ability to chart one's own course in life and be able to live their own lives as they see fit. As long as they aren't hurting innocent people with what they are doing.

Which is one example why Liberals and Conservative-Libertarians hate the War on Drugs (to use as an example) because we both believe in economic freedom as well as social freedom, we both believe in limited government and a limited foreign policy and national security. That our military can't be everything for everybody. And that it should be limited to protecting our own national interests and helping others that deserve it when we can, but that we can't do everything.

Where Liberals and Conservatives tend to differ is government's role in helping people who can't take care of themselves and need a hand up to be able to do that. Conservatives tend to be more hawkish on foreign policy and Liberals tend to be more internationalist, but we both believe in limited government and fiscal responsibility. But Liberals and Conservatives are the two dominant political factions in America. Center-Left and Center-Right where most Americans tend to be on one side or the other, rather than being Far-Left or Far-Right.