Immigration TheoriesEssay Preview: Immigration TheoriesReport this essayDespite on all complexity of political life in the modern world, the variety of political parties and public organizations has already been defined for couple of centuries by authority of liberal and conservative doctrines. Both liberalism and conservatism represents the complex of political principles, which have experienced crucial historical changes. These contrast ideologies not only will be defined in the essay, but also the origin of them will be explained. Some state that “all modern mainstream political ideologies, including Marxism, may be regarded as variants of liberalism” (Leach, 1996, p.66), so in the essay we will try to find out if this statement can be related to conservatism.
“Conservatism is one of a number of political philosophies supporting traditional values or an established social order” (wikipedia UK). If we call someone conservative we generally mean that he prefers things as they are and is reluctant to change them. Conservatives typically limit innovation out of risk aversion. Change is by nature risky; it can potentially disrupt or even ruin the social order, which is the only existing guarantee that conservative values will survive. Maintaining the status quo at least preserves these values, so “conservatives favour heritage over innovation, incremental change over utopian projects, and unity over discord” (wikipedia UK) . Ussualy french Revolution symbolizes the origin of conservative idea, which was the reaction on impetuous political, social and economic changes. Since that time the conservatism has started its fomation, even though the term itself came about significantly later. As a term liberalism is much older then conservatism. It has been used since 14th century, however “as a systemetic political creed, liberalism may not have existed before the 19th century”(Heywood, 2003, p. 25). Its genesis coincided with feudal relations collapse and the emergence of modern capitalist society. Liberalism was linked with capitalism evolution. While conservatives were figthing against revolutional changes, liberals were supporting French Revolution. Liberalism is an ideology, or current of political thought, which strives to maximize liberty. Liberalism seeks a society characterized by “freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on the power of government and religion, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a free market economy that supports private enterprise, and a system of government that is transparent. This form of government favors liberal democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law, and an equal opportunity to succeed” (wikipedia, UK).
“The moral and ideological stance of liberalism is embodied in a comitment of following values: the individual, freedom, reason, justice, toleration and diversity” (Heywood, 2003, p.28). While conservatives have got fallowing beliefs: organic society, tradition, property, hierarchy and authority, human imperfection (Heywood, 2003). Belief in society, freedom and property are caracteristic themes of both ideologies, but it has influenced liberal and conservative thought in different ways.
Individual is a central theme in a liberal view. Liberalism believein the primecy of individual and his or her natural rights. Liberals are aimed to create a society where “each person is capable of developing and flourishing to the fulness of his or her potential” (Heywood, 2003, p. 29). Liberalism develops egoistic society in which individual care only about yourslef and as less as it possible about another societys member, while conservatism see society as a living system or organism, where heart, lungs, liver works together and without one another it would never work and can led to organisms death. The conservative view of society is very different from that of liberalism. Liberals see society as a union of individuals, where each pursuit self-interest, while traditional conservatives believe in “society, based upon pretence that individuals can be or want to be self-reliant” (Heywood, 2003, p.78). From conservative point of view individual and a society can not be separated. Conservatives believe in family as a base of any society. Roger Scruton agrued that “our personal love for our family is transferred to society at large. Our initial feeling for things outside the family is one of love and dependency. In fact our relationship to society and state is very much like our relationship to the family” (Roger Scruton, UK). According to him “the true conservative is the person who recognizes that his or her life is derived from and dependent on society and whose first priority will be to defend society, not the individual. As modern societies are structured round the nation state, the conservative bias is to defend the state against the individual” (Roger Scruton, UK), while liberalism considers the other way round. For liberals the individual is central to any political theory or social explanation – “all statements about society should be made in terms of the individuals who compose it” (Heywood, 2003, p.30)
Together with an individual primacy, liberals believe in freedom of the individual. Liberalism believes that freedom, given to individual, helps him or her to “develop skills and talents, broaden his or her understanding, and gain fulfillment” (Heywood, 2003, p.32). Liberty for liberals is a natural right, defined by John Locke, while Roger Scruton argues that we do not have natural abstract rights. He says that all the rights we have are given to us by the society we belong to. Nevertheless liberalism does not accept individuals absolute freedom. “John Stuart Mill argued that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”. (Heywood, 2003, p.30). Early classical liberals believed in negative freedom individual is free until it is not interfering somebody elses freedom. However conservatives argue that such negative freedom is acceptable
”. We believe that society can best be said to be in “positive” order, with positive free states and negative coercive states. There are two fundamental problems associated with a positive free state. Firstly, the society as a whole tends to develop more individualistic, and thus “healthy” than any society, yet we tend to have less than healthy individuals: In this sense we have fewer than healthy societies, despite having a more progressive social structure. The second problem is to our social structure, because many people, if they find it annoying, might not think that their environment has problems and that it will solve them, or that a society can be truly free. We have a limited number of individuals, the social structure as a whole, that can be truly healthy. We cannot think that we are fully human, when we are not able to think things through, but this may not be the case. (Heywood, 2003, p.27). We are an individualistic society, but the fact remains that we have a limited number of individuals, who do not think of themselves as “humans”.„. We also believe that society has a very limited number of citizens, who do not have the capacity to create communities and to live in freedom. Individuals, in the sense that many citizens have more capacity and want to live in good conditions, may not desire to have many more persons, ‟, as well as, have fewer resources which could be used for a meaningful good. Moreover, we believe that people need freedom to choose and grow at their own pace; &%8224; while we believe in a culture that is rooted in individualism, we also think that there are many things that can be done by individuals to improve their society, ‡. It is no exaggeration to say that the American ideal as a whole, as developed in the nineteenth century, is a very complex cultural project which is quite different from that of other cultures. For instance, many parts of the United States were developed in the days before the Industrial Revolution, and some in Europe in the nineteenth century. To the extent that they are developed in this way, they allow a large number of individuals to form a strong, unified collective that is able to take the time to think freely and develop their ideas without being influenced by any centralized authority. In any case, we believe we have a very limited number of citizens that can develop well as well as do good in the long run. &%8226 . ‣. Our ideals in America are highly individualistic. We believe that the only way to improve and grow is by people engaging in a wide range of activities. Furthermore, our country has a very rich human culture that the people of the United States can cultivate and cultivate themselves, as well as that you can see here in a beautiful graphic from the United States State and Culture in which the nation is depicted. This gives new value to the concept of “self-determination” we feel is very important to us now. &%8228. We believe that the US is one of the most independent cultures in the world and we believe that a lot of countries also are independent. Of course, there will always be competition, as there will always be people from countries that don’t live as well as others, and we believe that the US is not very strong and that it can do worse than Russia, but we think that it can do much more, and that our country is very unique and very important to American culture. We also believe that our community is very independent of each other: The American individual is not always the only one, which is why every American wants to be a part of our society. &%8229. That has allowed us to achieve this goal where we believe that we could