- [Instructor] In this off-white color,
I have a handful of statements
that you might hear folks say especially
in the United States,
and what we're going to think about is are these statements
that you would typically hear from a liberal?
And I'm gonna make a little key here,
so I'm gonna use a light blue for liberal.
Conservative, I'll use this salmon color
for conservative, or a libertarian?
So I'll do this white color for libertarian.
Libertarian.
And I've pre-grouped these statements into categories.
They could be views on social issues or economic issues
and within each of those dimensions,
they could be views that might want more social
or economic control or ones
that want less social or economic control,
and this isn't a perfect full sampling of
all of the major issues that folks will talk about
and some of these things kind of border on social
and economic, or some of them
could be viewed as more control depending on
how you view it or less control,
but this is a first take on things.
So let's just go from the top left to the bottom right,
and I encourage you to keep pausing this video
and coming to your own conclusion.
So this first statement, affirmative action is a good thing.
Would you expect that to come from someone with a liberal,
conservative, or libertarian ideology?
Well, this would typically come
from someone with a liberal ideology.
Much of the ideas and policies
that liberals would favor might be around curing
social injustice, so they might say,
hey, we don't have the proper diversity in certain walks
of life right now, we don't have a level playing field,
so we need to make sure
that people are properly represented,
and so that would be something
that you would hear from liberals,
and it would be something
that in general involves more control.
A libertarian or a conservative would say,
hey, we shouldn't try to do social engineering here,
we should maybe make sure people have equal opportunities,
but that doesn't mean
that you have to have equal representation and outcome.
This next statement, marriage should be
between a man and woman.
Pause this video.
Who is likely to say that?
Well, that would typically come
from someone with a conservative ideology.
This would be around a theme that
many folks with conservative ideologies would point
to values that are worth preserving in a society,
that should not change,
and so that would typically come from them,
while a liberal or libertarian is more likely to say,
hey, what goes on between two people,
well, that's their decision
and really the government should
have no say on what they do.
We need tougher penalties
and policing to deal with crime.
Well, once again, that would be something that you would
likely hear from someone with a conservative ideology.
A liberal or libertarian would be on the opposite side.
They would say, hey, I'm afraid of too strict penalties,
too strict policing, I'm afraid
that the government is putting too many people in jail.
So now let's go to fewer social controls.
So marijuana should be legalized.
Pause this video.
Who is more likely to say that?
Well, many liberals would be likely to say that,
and also libertarians.
They would say, hey, once again,
what someone does within their own privacy,
why should the government have a say,
while many conservatives,
and this goes back to values
and kind of social fiber, might say,
well no, some of these drugs,
they break down people's value system.
Maybe they lead to crime and so a conservative would be more
likely to be against legalizing something like marijuana.
The next statement.
Laws restricting gun rights are unconstitutional
and won't have the intended impact.
Pause this video.
Who would say that?
Well, you would often hear a statement
like this from someone with a conservative ideology,
but also from someone with a libertarian ideology,
so libertarian ideology would also say something like that,
and they would both cite
that people have a right to protect themselves,
they might cite, hey, people have a right
to use guns for things like hunting,
and especially libertarians might make the argument
that people need to be armed in order
to protect themselves from an overly strong government,
from an overly strong police state.
So the next statement.
Same-sex couples should have full marriage rights.
Who's most likely to say that?
Well, this is kind of the opposite statement
of this one we saw up here,
and for the reasons we mentioned,
this is more likely to come
from someone with a liberal ideology or a libertarian,
libertarian ideology.
And for them, it would be about
personal liberty and equal rights.
And so you might already see some trends
that the conservative and liberals are kind
of mixed on the social when it comes to more control
or less control, and don't read
too much into how many there are of these.
This is just, you could view
as a random sampling of some issues.
If I sampled more, you might have more liberal boxes up here
or more conservative boxes down here,
but it seems like a mix.
But one clear thing that comes out
is that libertarians on the social dimension
are for less control.
But what about the economic dimension?
So this first statement,
everyone has a right to quality healthcare.
Who's more likely to say that?
Well, that would be a liberal.
Liberals, once again, they think a lot about injustice
and inequality and they want the government
to be proactive about it.
And so they would say, hey, the government should
somehow supply universal healthcare to folks.
Conservatives or libertarians,
not that they don't care about injustice or inequality,
but they would argue that, hey,
when the government kind of intervenes in things,
they don't, they have all sorts of unintended consequences
and oftentimes do more harm than good.
The next statement.
Rent control is a good thing.
Well, once again, this is likely to come from a liberal,
probably motivated from the idea
that if rents or living costs are getting too high,
that this is a way to avoid people being displaced
or being priced out of their neighborhood.
Now, conservatives and libertarians would argue
that rent control distorts the market,
it actually makes the properties
that aren't on rent control overly expensive,
and so it's probably doing more harm than good.
The next statement.
Social safety nets are crucial.
Once again, this is likely
to come from someone with a liberal ideology.
They believe that someone,
that the government has a role in making sure
that everyone has a basic standard of living,
so programs like food stamps or welfare.
Every worker has the right to a living wage.
And living wage is sometimes,
you'll hear this in the context of minimum-wage discussions.
Who would say that?
Well, once again, you're
likely to hear this from someone with a liberal ideology.
They believe that higher minimum wages are a good thing,
while conservatives or libertarians would argue that,
no, that distorts the market
and actually you might increase unemployment
and you might hurt the very people
that you're trying to help with some
of these efforts around minimum ages.
And what about here when we go
to less control on the economy?
Government intervention
in the free market will slow the economy, hurting everyone.
Well, as you could imagine,
this is kind of the opposite statement as these here,
because these once at the top
are all the government intervening
in a free economy in some way,
and so this statement is more
likely to come from a conservative,
some of the conservative ideology or a libertarian.
And so when you look in the economic dimension,
the distinction between conservative and liberal,
at least when it comes to more control
and less control, become more clear.
On economics, liberals tend to favor more control,
more government intervention with a focus
of trying to address social
or economic inequality or environmental concerns,
while conservatives and libertarians will often say,
well, that's gonna do more harm than good,
the government does have some functions
but it should really be as small as possible
and free markets are what's,
in the end of the day, going to make people better off.
So I will leave you there,
this is a very simple model,
but it helps us start to think about these issues,
and so when you think about issues
and you read about it in the newspaper,
try to think about it in this type of a framework.