welcome to political science 101 american government and politics this is lecture three for topic 1b and during this lecture we'll focus on political values and ideology u.s political culture and a summary of the key points let's begin with political values and ideology ideology is an organized set of values that individuals hold what i'm going to suggest to you in this lecture is that we can identify three key values along which we can understand people's ideology and that first set of values is order as in law and order the second one is freedom as in liberty and the third one is equality and importantly there are trade-offs between these values that we're going to examine before we do so a few quick points one regarding the ideological spectrum and please note that the drawings and this powerpoint right here are certainly imperfect basically you are familiar i'm sure with the terms left and right on the identical spectrum and i want you to know that the reference to left and right developed throughout history and it's actually a bit random it emerged after the french revolution the different factions in the parliamentary body happen to be seated a certain way and that's where the left right originated also i'd like you to understand the meaning of the classical term of liberalism so put aside for a moment what you associate with being liberal in the u.s and understand that the term liberalism has its roots in english and scottish political philosophy of the 18th century think for example adam smith um who wrote the wealth of nations and set the foundation for capitalism smith and other liberals emphasized individuals rights and freedoms in all policy areas economic and social and political issues liberalism called for political freedoms and also for economic freedoms from oppression from mighty governments and generally favored a limited role of government in terms of philosophers and politicians you can think james jefferson who is a liberal in the us in the classical sense in many european countries there are political parties that are labeled liberal and they basically are political parties that represent classic liberalism as in having a preference for a limited role of government and all policy affairs and in the us we don't have that we do have libertarians but they generally present a very strong preference and i'll get to that in just a moment now let's consider two values and the trade-offs between them the first trade-off we consider is the one between freedom and order so you're looking at an ideological spectrum here for social and cultural issues and the tradoma here is between freedom and order freedom on the left or on the right which captures ideological positions on social issues such as the freedom of speech privacy a woman's right to choose and issues such as same-sex marriage and the value trade-offs are the following those that are on the left are favoring less government more freedom so a limited role of government and those who are on the right favor more government more to keep and more government involvement to promote law and order or tradition and the trade-off is such is that if you are on the left you're willing to trade off some order to have more societal freedom and if you're on the right you're willing to trade off some freedom to have more societal order and of course it's a sliding scale so you may be just to the center right and say i'm willing to trade off a little social freedom to have more order and conversely on the left center here you're willing to trade off a little order for more freedom and you may have a strong preference and be further to the left fringe or to the right french now let's add some illogical names for that and so if you are here on the left this is liberalism in the classical sense favoring freedoms or if you further to the left libertarianism and on the right you're this is conservatism and the example of let's say marriage and the traditional meaning of marriage versus same-sex marriage illustrates this really well if you're on the left when it comes to social issues you don't want government necessarily to regulate what marriage should be and you prefer more freedom and if you're moving from left to right here more government action is desired so conservatives are basically inclined to protect an existing social order or tradition and they would prefer government to regulate marriage has traditionally meant if you're politically on the right here you also are generally more inclined to allow religion to play an important role and when it comes to foreign policy be strong on defense and more inclined to accept government surveillance in the name of national security and this is capturing how we refer to the left is liberal but we also typically associate left with wanting more government versus the right and you see here that that's not the case it is the case for the other trade-off and that is the trade-off between equality and freedom so let's look now at the ideological spectrum when it comes to economic issues the trade-off here is between equality so economic equality and freedom the question here is to what extent should government regulate a free market capitalism by let's say providing a minimum wage overseeing corporations environmental regulation and if you are on the left you prefer more government regulation traditionally to promote more economic equality than a unregulated market would give us and more modern trade-off here environmental regulation if you're on the right you prefer economic freedoms free markets basically even if that means you're trading off some equality and there's higher social inequality and again here if you're moving from right to left you're moving here towards more government action and as before one could be on the fringes or you could be a centrist and either way it always involved a trade-off if you're in the center you're willing to make some trade-offs but those trade-offs are not stark if you're further to the fringes you're willing to trade off more freedom if you're on the left or equality if you're on the right let's look at some of the ideological labels that are associated with that so this is the same chart with some labels factored in typically broadly speaking when we're talking about the center left here we're talking about an ideology that is known as social democracy that's not a term that we commonly use in the u.s where we tended to dislike the term social but social democratic parties or social democratic ideology willing to trade off some market freedoms to have more economic equality so again it's a trade-off and social democracy doesn't seek to overthrow free markets but to regulate them and the further left you move the more regulation you're comfortable and on the very fringe here the very end you would have communism then you want to do away with free markets and have a government controlled economy and in between communism and social democracy socialism even though that term also has different meanings in different contexts on the right here if you're someone who prefers freedom of markets and you're willing to trade off some economic equality or also some environmental regulation that is what we would term economic liberalism and again remember the classic meaning of liberalism means freedom a limited role of government and all the way further to the right would be libertarianism and this again captures that we have a sliding scale of different ideological preferences this has been a lot of information so feel free to pause this video now i'm going to suggest that we look at both trade-offs at the same time and create a two-dimensional chart and i'm going to leave this particular trade-off here left to right in place but i'm going to remind you of the trade-off between freedom and order the first one that we looked at and make that the vertical axis and that looks like that so again reminding you social freedom on the left social order on the right and economic equality left economic freedom right now we have four quadrants and there's a lot of information here bear with me and just consider the first two which i'm going to suggest to you the ideology of social democracy which is an example for us democrats is in this particular setup on the top left quadrant and if you look at the trade-offs social democracy is willing to trade off some social order to have more social freedom less government involvement when it comes to social issues such as free speech regulation of marriage etc and more government involvement when it comes to the economy and conversely in the bottom right quadrant we have conservatism such as u.s republicans willing to trade off some social freedom to have more order again think the example of traditional marriage but they're willing to have less equality to have more economic freedom moving into the right quadrant here you can see this is an ideology that favors freedom above all else this is liberalism as in classical liberalism as in thomas jefferson and if you go further to the fringes because of course you could be anywhere in this quadrant there's always trade-offs and if you move further to the fringes here you have libertarianism or this idea of anarchy of having no government that's never been implemented it's not really possible even markets need a basic function of government and if we move into the lower left quadrant this is an ideology that's maybe not as common a good term for that would be humanitarianism and this is an ideology comfortable with a government role both in terms of regulating markets and in terms of regulating social affairs there are not many good historical examples of political parties say that exemplify that but again in the fringes you have more extreme versions of this is not a very good drawing but for example look at fascism fascism as an ideology is inherently anti-democratic and it does favor social order but what they what fascists view society to be and fascism is also anti-capitalism which is why i put it on the left on the upper quadrant all the way in the fringes you would have communism and to clarify i'm talking about the ideology as promoted by marx and engels not the way it was actually implemented by the soviet union and china which definitely favored social order and had have been very oppressive so communism the ideology promoted by karl marx was one that favored economic equality and social freedom for example to do away with the institution of marriage altogether so this was utopian version of a free and better and equal society in between precisely where they are in this quadrant may vary but i put green parties in this generally green parties are generally closest to social democratic parties or social democracy as in that they favor social freedom and regulation of the market i hope this helped to clarify some positions i want you to take away that there are trade-offs between these values equality freedom and order are opposite when it comes to social democracy and conservatism and also that it's not correct to say that people on the left want more government because it really depends on the policy area and all that being said i put this purple bar here because that's where we're going to be returning to back to the simplified one-dimensional and logical chart that we typically use in the us now you know that it really is more complex than this one-dimensional chart i hope this was helpful and clarified some position perhaps even your own secondly let's talk about american political culture the concept of political culture is related to ideology but it's not identical political culture is broader because it refers to entirely nations broadly shared values beliefs emotions and attitudes about how the government should function and what the form of government and obviously we know that we have different biological preferences within a nation so this is sort of a broader lens what can we say about americans political preferences broadly speaking and broadly speaking if we say compare americans to others we can say that american political culture emphasizes values of individualism liberty equality of opportunity not outcome and democracy and self-government if you're doing more readings on american political culture you'll be reading lucian pie gabriel almond sydney verba classic readings on political culture and what i'd like to introduce to you is an argument made by john kingdom um this is an argument from 1999 and john kingdom wrote a book titled america the unusual kingdom's argument is one of so-called path dependence saying that history played a role the people who settled in north america rebelled against the british were more suspicious of authority and hierarchy than people elsewhere this is in part because they immigrated here and oftentimes left home countries where they may have felt oppressed those beliefs dictated the type of political institutions that were established in the u.s we can see that power was fragmented in the u.s not only within the federal government but between federal government and the states this is a fun global attitude survey by pew it's a little bit older but that doesn't matter because culture doesn't change very quickly and it's titled the american western european values gap it confirms that there are different attitudes in terms of individualism and individuals role of the state which basically means the government you can see here when being asked the question whether or not freedom to pursue life's goals without state interference is more important or state guaranteeing nobody is in need that the us stands out with a preference for freedom versus the state or the government guaranteeing that people they need likewise the responses to the question whether success in life is determined by forces outside our control the u.s stands out with disagreeing with that and this is reflecting this idea of individualism and perhaps also linked to this idea of the american dream which is focused on individual effort to complement this in terms of political culture a few words by american presidents for example franklin roosevelt proclaimed that quote we are a nation of many nationalities bound together by the unity of freedom and equality end quote and certainly this refers to equality of opportunity also in his first inaugural address barack obama pointed to the promise that quote all are equal all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness now lastly a quick summary of what we just studied political ideology is centered around the values of freedom or liberty order and equality and there are trade-offs between freedom and order on the one hand and freedom and equality on the other different issues social cultural and economics require different trade-offs when it comes to ideological preferences and political parties u.s democrats favor freedom over order and equality over freedom and conversely u.s republicans favor order over freedom and freedom over equality as you've seen we charted ideology on the two-dimensional chart which clarifies these positions but for the will return to the commonly used one-dimensional one because that's what's typically used the simplification is that we refer to the left as liberal and to the right is conservative but now you know that that is a simplification secondly political culture is a more broader concept than ideology it refers to a nation's broadly shared values beliefs and attitudes about how the government should function and u.s political culture includes a strong preference for liberty freedom individualism and equality of opportunity