Political Science

Essay by audia628University, Bachelor's March 2006

download word file, 5 pages 5.0

We have many different types of people in the United States. There are no two people that are alike. Every single person has different opinions and has different beliefs. People have different opinions of many various ideas. Two people might have dissimilar opinions, even though they might agree on other opinions. Beliefs are just like opinions, different people believe in different things. We the people of the United States have certain names we give people for their opinions and their beliefs politically. The politicians see people as conservatives and liberals. The conservatives and liberals are used in characterizing the political attitudes of an average American. According to James Q. Wilson, author of American Government, "liberals and conservatives are a way in explaining or justifying their preferences for candidates or policies" (Wilson, page 73). I will be describing what "Liberals" and "Conservatives" mean in the United States today, and to what extent these terms are useful in characterizing the political attitudes of the average American.

One of the two different types of people we have in the United States government in a political standpoint is Liberals. Liberals are people who favor a more active federal government for regulating business, supporting social welfare, and protecting minority rights, but who prefer less regulation on private social conduct (Bryant, page 2). In other words liberals are people who are in favor of the government getting involved in their actions. We have different types of liberals in the United States. There are not a lot of people who are liberal or conservative on all the issues. There are people who have liberal beliefs on a certain issue, but they have conservative beliefs on another issue "Though the average citizen cannot be described as being purely liberal or purely conservative, bear in mind that political activists...