Political Ideology Libertarianism Essay

Tags: political ideology republican party john locke adam smith democratic party government liberty

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Introduction

The political ideology I align with the most is libertarianism. A lot of Americans pay lip service to liberty, but I am not one of them. The libertarian political ideology is based on the fundamental principle of human liberty: that the government should not interfere in the lives of individuals unless their actions infringe on the rights of others. I believe that the founding fathers of the United States intended for a libertarian government, which evolved out of Enlightenment values and philosophies and made their way into the writings of luminaries like Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith (Boaz, 1999). While I am not surprised to recognize libertarianism as my own political ideology, I do not believe that the current Libertarian Party of the United States has sufficient support to replace either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party in terms of popularity or influence.

Research shows that people with libertarian values also share in common certain psychological characteristics. For example, Iver, Koleva, Graham, et al (2010) found that in terms of moral principles, libertarians do indeed endorse individual liberty as a grounds for ethical decisions more than any other moral framework, and that libertarians are also more “cerebral” than emotional when making moral decisions (p. 1). This makes sense, given that libertarians lack the “bleeding heart” ethics of liberals and yet share in common with Democrats the belief that government should not interfere in any matter of personal choice, including the decisions individuals make with regard to whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, whether or not a person wishes to use drugs, or who a person wants to marry.

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The difference between libertarians and liberals, or Democrats, is that the latter supports a strong central government whereas the Libertarian Party is categorically opposed not just to government interference in personal lives but also opposed to federal taxes and other boated “big government” structures and institutions (Libertarian Party, 2018). The Republican Party seemed at one point to be veering towards libertarianism in its rhetoric against big government, but has turned towards social conservatism. As a result, the Republican Party now supports government intrusion in the personal lives of individuals while denying the rights of some citizens to have access to essential services: which is the antithesis of libertarianism (Vallentyne & van der Vossen, 2014).

About ten percent of the population claims to….....

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References

Boaz, D. (1999). Key concepts of libertarianism. CATO Institute. https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/key-concepts-libertarianism

Iyer, R., Koleva, S., Graham, J., et al (2010). Understanding libertarian morality. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1665934

Kiley, J. (2014). In search of libertarians. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/08/25/in-search-of-libertarians/

Libertarian Party (2018). About the Libertarian Party. https://www.lp.org/about/

Silver, N. (2015).There Are Few Libertarians. But Many Americans Have Libertarian Views. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-are-few-libertarians-but-many-americans-have-libertarian-views/

Vallentyne, P. & Van Der Vossen, B. (2014). Libertarianism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/

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