Political Science Paper 2

Submitted By rvvalenti
Words: 1447
Pages: 6

Rachel Valenti
Dr. Ivan Savic
Political Science 1000
Question #1
November 3, 2014

In the world we live in today, and from many years ago, political ideologies have shaped the way people think, react and evolve in a country. Ideologies such as Liberalism, Conservatism, Socialism, Feminism, and Environmentalism have played a role in the everyday life for decades.

Canada’s first organized political party was the conservatives (Mintz, Close, Croci). Conservative ideologies have strengths but also have weaknesses to consider. In my opinion, the Conservatives greatest strength is

Conservatism is a reaction to Liberalism. Liberalists are mainly focused on the individual and the personal freedoms and equalities that come along with it. Contrary to that, Conservatives focus on the community of people, traditional values or beliefs, and tend to lack the want for change. If change is an option, a Conservative will always want it to be gradual.

The French Revolution was a kick-start to people coming up with conservative ideologies. The French Revolution was bloody and dangerous. Future conservatives thought that people should not be able to have so much reasoning.

There are many varieties of Conservatives. Christian democrats are one type. These are people with roots of Christianity. For example, in the United States, almost every candidate in an election will mention something about Jesus Christ. Many people joke that you cannot get elected in the United States, unless Jesus Christ is mentioned somewhere in your speech. In some cases, this is true.

Another type of conservative is a Social Conservative. These people are mainly focused on family, gay marriage and other socially open topics.

Many questions have been put forward when talking about if Conservatism is really an ideology. We can ask this considering it is not focused on change. Yes, it has ideological goals, but would rather keep them at a gradual pace, and be filtered though tradition.

When depicting between the strong and weak points of Conservatism, we have to first examine the left and right spectrums. This is a scale based on how far to the left a political ideology is, or how far to the right a political ideology is.

The left spectrum deals with human rights, more social and economic equality, human reasoning, and laws based on human rights rather than tradition (Mintz, Close, Croci). The right spectrum is more focused on opposition to imposing greater social and economic equality, and maintaining traditional values (Mintz, Close, Croci). Most of the time this is religion based values.

Ideologies in the left spectrum are Communism, Socialism, and Reform Liberalism. In the center, Classical Liberalism appears. Ideologies in the right spectrum are Conservatism and Fascism (Mintz, Close, Croci). This spectrum outlook can be a little controversial depending on who is examining it. Conservatives view that Liberals should be in the left spectrum rather then the center and Liberals view that Conservatives are too far to the right (Mintz, Close, Croci).

The greatest strength of the Conservative party is the fact that they can detect threats coming towards the morality of the people. Even though Conservatives are sometimes considered to be against any change at all, but this is not the exact case. Conservatives see the need for change, but will not make a big adjustment if they feel it will hurt the institutions that are already in place, or the traditions that they believe in.

Often times people of the Liberal party cannot detect these threats. Of course a Liberal will see the need for change, and no matter what the circumstance, make the call to change. Conservatism allows for the government to step back, review what the needs and wants are, decide whether or not this change will affect the big picture, and discuss whether or not the change will affect the institutions set in place.

This strength also conjoins with the fact that