919 Conservatives, Liberals & Collectivists

<p>In America, the differing ideologies are primarily measures of liberty; but some words are used so haphazardly that their definitions are not clear, especially in politics, so people generally try and fit them on the ubiquitous Left-Right scale; in the case of liberty, Collectivists would be on the left, Liberals in the middle, and Conservatives of the right.</p> <p>Conservatives want a society based on strength, which provides stability, as proven by the many civilizations in the past that rose on strength and fell when they became weak. Unfortunately, concentrated strength results in an aristocracy where an upper class of people have maximum liberty, while lower class members of the society have less, or even none. Several hundred years ago, during The Enlightenment, Liberalism emerged, with the idea of redistributing liberty among all the members of society. America was founded on that principle, and has been mostly successful in getting the most liberty to the most people. Liberalism, as maligned as the word has become, created the most advanced civilization in history by providing freedom to create wealth & opportunity, the ingredients of liberty. However, liberty favors the competent, capable & prepared, which creates a pyramid of success. Relatively speaking, half the population is on the top of the pyramid with the rest holding them up. A side effect of liberalism is that it also redistributes strength, and the bottom half of the pyramid uses their strength to push for what would be better for them, which is Collectivism, forced sharing, where individual liberty is reduced in favor of what is supposedly best for everyone.</p>