Thinking of moving to Australia!

[Mr Khan]

mrstickball said:

Khuutra said:

Rath said:
He might not like New Zealand. We're a bit liberal, for example we just banned parents from smacking their children.

Is that kind of authoritarianism progressive? I just don't know

Political labels confuse me sometimes

No, its called liberalism.

Liberalism, nor conservatism fit into a true ideology, as they mix values that are usually polar opposites of the eachother:

Conservatism combines mostly free-market ideas with certain social constraints (gay marriage, abortion, drugs, ect)

Liberalism combines moderate economic ideas with fewer, but existing social constraints (corporal punishment, smoking bans, hate speech,ect)

 

Neither party is actually 'conservative' (which should be authoritarian, since conservation wuld seek to constrict social principles and economics for fear of major changes) or liberal (which would be libertarian, since liberal is derived from the word liberty).

The real polar opposites are between libertarianism (classic liberalism - free to do whatever, but be responsible) and authoritarianism (free to do little, with responsibily to and by the government). Most ideologies fit somewhere in those constraints.

If you want to understand the ideologies, head over to politicalcompass.org

Conservativism is whatever it is in context, much like Liberalism. Currently the order of the day in America is a mostly free market economy with social values that can generally date back to the 70s or so, and relatively few controls for wealth disparity. Liberals envision progress as institutionalizing new cultural values towards gays, birth control, etc., as well as putting controls for wealth disparity in place, conservatives want to hold the established order.

Liberalism in 19th century Europe was very, very close to our perception of Libertarianism, whereas the Conservatives of 19th century Europe had ideas that would seem downright barbaric today. Theirs is a contextualized ideology