 Chapter 9, Political Ideology. Okay, so what is a political ideology? Well, according to your textbook, a political ideology is a belief system that consists of ideas, attitudes, or values about government and politics, and the public policies that are designed to length the values or achieve the goals. So basically, political ideology is what people think about government, what people think government should do. So it's a set of ideas that dictate, that govern how we think about politics, how we think about government, how we vote, right? Because people vote for the person they believe most shares their political ideology. So here in the United States, our two main political parties, the Republicans and Democrats, are based on two competing political ideologies, right? They compete with each other. Republicans and Democrats disagree, and that's because they believe in two very different political ideologies. One is the conservative ideology, which is what Republicans tend to believe in, and the liberal ideology, which is what Democrats tend to believe in. So the Republican Party is basically a conservative party, and the Democratic Party is a liberal party. Now, we need to be careful to know that not all Republicans are very conservative, not all Democrats are very liberal. Some Democrats have conservative beliefs in some areas, some Republicans have more liberal beliefs in some areas. So it's not correct to say that every single Republican is very conservative or every single Democrat is very liberal, but for the most part, as a general rule, the Republican Party is mostly conservative and the Democratic Party is mostly liberal. And I'll get to discussing what that means and what sort of specific beliefs a conservative has and what specific beliefs a liberal has. Okay, for the most part, Republicans believe in limited government and sticking to traditional social and religious based moral principles. So what do I mean by limited government? A government that doesn't do a whole lot, a government that is not very active in people's lives, a government that doesn't tell people what they should be doing. Republicans believe in limited government. Republicans pretty much believe that really the only thing that government should do is protect us from both external threats where that's where the military comes in and from internal threats, internal crime, domestic crime, and that's where you get policing. So for the most part, Republicans believe that is what government should be doing and Republicans also believe that we should be sticking to traditional social and religious based moral principles. So I think it's fair to say that for the most part, Republicans tend to be more religious than Democrats, conservatives tend to be more religious than liberals. So what do we mean by traditional social and religious based moral principles? Well, take for example the issue of gay marriage. Republicans tend to be opposed to gay marriage. Now, some Republicans believe that gay marriage should be legal, but for the most part, most Republicans do not believe that gay marriage should be legal. Why? Because they believe in traditional social and religious based moral principles, the traditional social principle that marriage is only between a man and a woman and that principle is based on a religious belief. For the most part, a Judeo-Christian belief, a Jewish and Christian belief that homosexuality is a sin and therefore gay marriage should not be allowed. Democrats, on the other hand, believe in a more activist government. So Democrats don't just believe that the role of government is to keep us safe, but also that the role of government is to achieve fairness in society. Democrats and liberals tend to believe that government has a role to play in eliminating the inequalities that exist in society, especially class-based and race-based inequalities. So racism, for example, is something that liberals think that government should try to eliminate through civil rights laws. And also that class-based economic differences can be addressed and eliminated or at least reduced by government in the form of more social spending, higher taxes on the wealthy in order to provide more funding for government assistance to poor people. And Democrats also believe in the power of government to advance social progress, especially when that social progress is something that aligns with current public opinion. And to explain that a little more, I'll go right back to the example of gay marriage. 30 years ago, even 20 years ago, most of the public did not support gay marriage. Public opinion polls did not support gay marriage. Or even equal rights for gay and lesbians. Today, that's a completely different story. And even five, ten years ago, that really began to change where more and more Americans began to support legalizing gay marriage and more and more Americans believed that gay and lesbians deserve the same equal rights as heterosexual Americans. And so because of that change in public opinion, governments around the country, first state governments around the country began to legalize gay marriage. And finally several years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that throughout the entire country, gay and lesbian couples had a constitutional right to marry legally. Okay, so that in a nutshell is a very clear difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, between the Serbs and Liberals, the idea of how active government should be in our lives, in society, and also what role government should play in advancing social progress or keeping us tied to traditional, social, and religious-based moral principles. So what Republicans conservatives tend to believe in and to delve in even deeper into specific policy ideas, specific beliefs about government, Republicans and conservatives tend to believe in free market economic independence from government. And what that means is that the government should not be controlling the economy. The government should really have a hands-off policy on the economy and let the economy, which is made up of mostly private businesses, control themselves. That government should not have high taxes on government, so free market economic independence from government means two things, low taxes and low regulation. Well, why low taxes? Because Republicans believe that when you tax business greatly, what you're doing is you're taking away money from businesses that they could use to reinvigorate their businesses, grow their businesses. And when businesses grow, they hire more people, which gives jobs to more people, which generates more money for the economy. So Republicans and conservatives tend to believe that high taxes prevents businesses from making money, prevents businesses from growing, and it actually hinders economic growth and hinders the well-being of American society, American workers, the American people. And tied to that is the Republican conservative belief in low regulation. What is regulation? Regulation is rules that the government imposes on businesses that forces them to abide by certain rules in order to be able to do business. And regulation often costs businesses money. So for example, several years ago, many state and local governments, including here in New York City, began to require businesses, certain restaurants, especially fast food restaurants, to start publicizing the calorie counts of their food on both the signs in their restaurants and also in some cases on the menus that they give to prospective customers. So the recent New York City's government and other governments around the country began to do this was because of a concern for improving the health of citizens, that if people who went to McDonald's knew just how many calories are in a Big Mac or in large fries, they might think twice about eating that kind of food very often and that would lead to improved health. And even though it would cost business money, governments, local governments argued that in the long run it's actually good to save money because a lot of the people who eat a lot of fast food like that tend to develop bad health outcomes like diabetes, obesity, which leads to heart conditions, heart attacks, things like that, hypertension, high blood pressure, things like that. And so governments argued that what we're doing here is both good for the government in the long run, it will help us save healthcare on the healthcare cross and it's good for people to keep them healthier. But the downside was that it costs businesses money to redo their signage and redo their menus and it actually cost them customers in the fact because people when they were confronted with the calorie counts and the levels of fat and sodium in these foods started to not eat as much fast food and so it hurt the fast food business. And so that is an example of a regulation that changes a lot of things about how businesses are run, how the government gets involved in people's lives, and so on and so forth. Another example is smoking, anti-smoking laws like Mike Bloomberg put into effect when he first became mayor of New York before Mike Bloomberg became mayor, you could smoke in restaurants and bars, now you cannot in New York City. So Republicans tend to believe that the government has no role, the government should not be doing these kinds of things that people should be allowed to make their own choices and be freer from government intrusion and that business should also be free from government intrusion so that they can be as profitable as they can be. So Republicans deserve to believe in free marketing, economic independence from government and they believe in low taxes and low regulation. Republicans also believe in less social spending, social spending on things like welfare, healthcare for the poor, things like that. The Republicans and conservatives tend to disapprove of social spending like on welfare food stamps, for example, unemployment compensation because they argue that what this does is inhibit people from going out and finding jobs that people who are out of work, who are receiving public assistance have an incentive not to go look for work and it's not fair to people who do work hard and Republican conservatives also believe that it costs the government too much money and is one of the reasons why the government is currently in debt. Now Democrats and Liberals totally disagree with that but this is what Republicans deserve to believe and that what you're doing by having so much social spending is that you're disincentivizing people from working hard. Another thing that Republicans and conservatives believe is having a strong military in order to defend the United States from threats and in order to prevent anyone else from trying to become a greater superpower than we are. So Republicans and conservatives tend to believe in strong military spending and many of them argue that the best way to win wars is not to have wars in the first place and the best way to prevent war is to have a strong military so that no other country would dare threaten the United States. So Republicans tend to not favor lots of spending from the government except in the area of military spending. Another thing that Republicans and conservatives believe in is law and order and what I mean by that is the idea of fighting crime through aggressive policing through strong policing. So for example Republicans are very supportive of the idea of stopping frisk the police strategy that has been so controversial here in New York City and other parts of the country because statistics show that most of the people who were stopped by the police were not engaged in criminal activity and most of the people stopped by the police were not white, were either black or Hispanic, black or Latino. And lastly, Republicans and conservatives tend to believe in traditional social values so what that means is that they only believe that heterosexual marriage should be legal, that gay marriage should not be legal although that's changing more and more Republicans and conservatives believe in gay marriage now or at least believe that it should be legal especially since the Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional. Republicans and conservatives also do not believe that civil rights laws should extend to transgendered persons and a couple of lectures ago when I talked about civil rights I talked about the very recent Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court ruled that civil rights laws do apply to transgendered persons, that transgendered persons may not be legally fired from a job simply because they are transgendered but Republicans do not agree with that. That civil rights laws should not apply to transgendered people. Republicans and conservatives are also anti-abortion they believe that abortion is a sin, that abortion is the murder of human life and Republicans and conservatives believe in maximum freedom for religious institutions what I mean by that they believe that religious institutions because of the First Amendment should not have to fall under the requirements of many of our civil rights laws so for example Republicans and conservatives believe that a Catholic school should be allowed to fire a teacher who is gay or not hire a teacher somebody who applies for a job and is gay whereas in a public government-funded setting like city tech those laws apply so because city tech is a state institution is run by the state of New York as a public college we cannot not hire somebody who applies for a job as a professor simply because that person is gay or transgendered or black or Latino whereas conservatives believe Republicans and conservatives believe that because religious institutions follow their own moral principles their own religious principles that to require them to not abide by them in order to follow civil rights laws would be a violation of the First Amendment even if it means discriminating against people Democrats and liberals tend to believe in an active government regulation of the economy and Democrats believe that regulation is good to some degree because it protects people so for example one of the main types of regulations that the government has on food businesses is safety regulations that are designed to make sure that the food that food companies produce for us to eat is safe for us to eat now there's no doubt that following these regulations costs these food companies money and food companies tend to pass that cost on to us so these regulations make the food we buy a little bit more expensive but Democrats and liberals say that's worth it that's a good trade off because these regulations also ensure that the food we're buying is safe for us to eat Democrats and Republicans say that if we allowed companies to self-regulate like many conservatives and Republicans want them to be able to do then certain food companies might tend to cut corners in order to save money and that might lead to people getting sick from buying food that's not really safe enough to eat Democrats and Republicans tend to believe in more social spending because Democrats and liberals believe that there are serious inequities inequalities in our economy between classes of people between the upper classes and the working and lower classes and so by having more social spending on things like food stamps, housing assistance affordable healthcare that what the government can do is help to alleviate those inequalities and allow people on the poor end of the social scale to be able to live a good life and be safe and secure which Democrats and liberals would say is the role of government not only to keep us safe and alive but to let us live a good life and toward that end Democrats and liberals believe that high military spending should be reallocated to social programs so it's not that Democrats and liberals don't support the military and don't believe that the US should have a military it's just that most Democrats and liberals would believe would say that we don't need to spend as much money as we do on the military that a lot of that money would be better spent helping people by being reallocated to social programs and if we did that more kids would have an equal education because there wouldn't be such a big difference between the quality of schools in rich neighborhoods and the quality of schools in poor neighborhoods there wouldn't be such so many people without healthcare if we allocated more spending to social programs and when it comes to law and order Democrats and liberals favor having a less emphasis on policing prosecution and incarceration meaning putting people in jail and more emphasis on combating the social problems that lead to crime like poverty joblessness lack of educational opportunities so it's not that Democrats and liberals don't want to combat crime it's just that Democrats and liberals have a very different attitude about how to combat crime than do Republicans and conservatives and Democrats and liberals tend to hold progressive social values meaning that we need to change our laws and upgrade our laws especially our civil rights laws in order to meet the changed attitudes of modern day America which includes a more open and more open embrace and more tolerance for all GDBQ persons gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, queer people keeping abortion legal is another thing that Democrats and liberals believe in so Democrats and liberals believe that the government that women have a right to an abortion they believe in Roe v. Wade and what the Supreme Court said about women having a constitutional right to abortion and Democrats and liberals believe in a separation of church and state so Democrats and liberals believe that the First Amendment should be respected that religious people's beliefs should be respected but that the government should not suspend civil rights laws for example and other laws for the benefit of churches and religion that churches should be kept separate from government that the freedom of churches should be kept separate from the laws of government many Americans believe in another type of ideology a third type of ideology called the Libertarian ideology so not everyone in the United States is either Republican or Democrat conservative or liberal some people are Libertarian there are fewer Libertarians than there are conservatives or liberals or Republicans or Democrats but many Americans believe in the Libertarian ideology and Libertarians believe that the government's only role is to protect people from harm so Libertarians believe that government should do very, very little so Libertarians believe in an even more limited idea of government than even conservatives and Republicans do like conservatives Libertarians believe in free marketing and economic independence from government so they also believe in low taxes and low regulation again because they believe that government should not be really doing really much in terms of its effect on people's lives unlike so when it comes to their economic beliefs conservatives tend to be more like Libertarians I mean tend to be more like conservatives and Republicans but when it comes to military and foreign policy they tend to be more like Democrats and liberals because they believe in an isolationist military and foreign policy Libertarians believe that the only role of the military should be to protect us from threats, direct threats they don't believe that the U.S. should be involved in the rest of the world to the extent that we are today and to the extent that many conservatives believe we should be so for example when Donald Trump ran for president he said I'm going to get us out of all these wars I'm going to remove a lot of our troops from around the world and bring them home that's an isolationist idea of not being so engaged in the world because Libertarians believe that one of the reasons why the U.S. gets involved in so many messes around the world is because we are there and so if we're not in other parts of the world if we're not meddling in other parts of the world then we wouldn't need to have such a big military we could focus the militaries on just protecting the American people from foreign invasions but unlike liberals and Democrats and more like conservatives and Republicans Libertarians believe in less social spending and when it comes to social policy the Libertarians believe more like Democrats and liberals do that govern to stay out of people's more religious lives that there should be a separate state but they also believe that government should stay out of people's health choices so for example Libertarians would totally oppose the idea of forcing businesses to put calorie counts on signs and menus Libertarians oppose anti-smoking laws because they say if people want to smoke that's their freedom, that's their liberty and that's where the term Libertarian comes from Libertarians believe that government should allow people to be as free as they can and not meddling in their moral lives or religious lives or even their health choices so Libertarians also oppose Michael Bloomberg for his anti-smoking laws but also when Michael Bloomberg tried to limit the large size of soda somebody could buy at a 7-Eleven or at a movie theater or at a fast food restaurant Libertarians said that's not the government's job to tell people that they can't buy a 64 ounce slurpee if I want to buy a 64 ounce slurpee that's my right as an American and I should be able to do it so when it comes to Libertarians they share some beliefs with conservatives and Democrats and they share some of their ideology with Democrats and liberals so they're a mix of both depending on what the particular issue is many Americans are also socialists believe in socialist ideology socialists believe that the government's main function is to eradicate the social class differences that exist between people so in this respect they're more like Democrats and liberals than they are like Republicans so remember what I said a few minutes ago about how Democrats and liberals believe in high social spending because they believe that the government's use of social spending can help eradicate the differences that exist between the social classes well that's pretty much exactly what socialism is about so in that respect Democrats and liberals have a social ideology very much like socialists socialists believe in a great deal of economic regulation even more economic regulation than Democrats and liberals so even though Democrats and liberals have a lot of similarity with socialists most Democrats and liberals are not actually socialists they have agreements with socialists but they are not exactly socialists because socialists believe in even more economic regulation and even more large amounts of social spending than Democrats and liberals do and a last ideology that I'm going to mention is the anarchist ideology anarchists oppose the very existence of organized government so anarchists are very much extreme in that they don't even believe in government so every other ideology has very defined ideas about what they believe government should be doing and shouldn't be doing anarchists believe that there shouldn't even be government anarchists believe that people would be the most free without government that anarchists believe that people would be happier and freer and ultimately safer without government because people would learn how to live together peacefully and freely now a lot of people I think would probably say that's kind of a naive idea it sounds great but it would probably never be able to happen in our modern world but that is what anarchists believe the idea of no government at all so that is the end of chapter 9 and political ideology I will see you for our next lecture