First Blog

Kind of a boring name... I will try to be more creative in the future.

What's a party?

In America, we have two main parties; the democratic party and the conservative party. A party is a group of people who share common ideals and follow the same political platform. My definitions/distinctions between the two are as follows:

Conservative: Follow old traditions, more government control of individuals and individual's rights, lower taxes, less support for social programs, privatization of industries such as healthcare, and heavy defense spending.

Democratic: More freedom/protect freedoms at almost all costs, more government control of industries, public healthcare and public social programs, higher taxes to support welfare systems and such.

Of course my definitions are not perfect. For instance, there are many liberals who do not support welfare programs, and many conservatives that do. This is just what I believe is the general mold of platforms. I think it would be impossible to come up with a perfect definition of exactly what a party is since people are not perfect creatures. We do not necessarily act as we are supposed to and do not necessarily follow the 'mold' of our parties. Some people feel a lot stronger about certain issues on their party's platform than others do. Some people are more committed and dedicated to their parties than others, etc.

If it were up to me, I would like to see less indentification with parties. I think that a lot of our problems in Washington stem from the idea that an idea is bad because it came from the 'enemies' party. We are hesistant to accept the ideas of the other party members because many feel a strong committment to their own. I believe that an idea is a good idea based on what it will do for our country, not on which party came up with it.