What do the terms “left” and “right,” “liberal” and “conservative” really mean? Because definitions can change in a short period of time, we are looking at these for what they mean today. For example, the term “liberal” comes from the word “liberator.” This was the term that the American patriots were called during The Revolutionary War, but the people who hold to most of the beliefs of those patriots are today called “conservatives.”
This being understood, we will begin with generalized distinctions between these terms. Today, liberals tend to look to the government for the answer to most of our problems, and therefore believe it needs to be bigger and more powerful. Conservatives generally think that government does not manage anything well, and that over-regulation, foolish regulations, and laws are the cause of many of our problems.
It is not true that liberals tend to think the government is the answer to all of our problems, and it is not true that conservatives are anti-government. Conservatives know that only the government can do many things that are required in modern society. These would be things like national defense, law enforcement, regulating interstate commerce, international relations, and the judicial system as prescribed in The Constitution. Liberals tend to see the government doing much more.
In relation to state and local governments, conservatives tend to push back on government overreach and attempts to pass and enforce ordinances that try to micro-manage the people in matters that are not a serious threat to endanger or harm others. It is a misunderstanding that conservatives do not care about the poor or needy, but real studies show that conservatives actually care about them many times more in very measurable ways than liberals do who promote the government to take care of them. For example, studies of the tax returns of liberal and conservative elected officials found that conservatives were many times more generous in giving to charities that helped the needy than liberals.
Liberals and conservatives may share the same goals of having the truly needy taken care of, but just have a different opinion of how this can best be done. Liberals tend to think that bigger government can do things bigger and better, but studies of the efficiency of government agencies reveal that many of these are the most inefficient and ineffective at accomplishing what they have been mandated to do. These studies revealed that only a third, and sometimes as little as one tenth of the resources going through a government agency actually made it to the needs. The rest was consumed by the bloated and mismanaged bureaucracy.
No doubt that the larger some charities have become, the more bureaucratic, inefficient, and ineffective they have likewise become. Liberals have argued with some legitimacy that even though the government is not as efficient and effective as it should be, if they did not address some of the social issues and needs, they would not get addressed at all. There are some examples where this may be true, but who is to say that if government had not taken these over, charities would be doing them and doing them better?
There is also an obvious answer to organizations and bureaucracies that become too large to be managed well—make them smaller. This is why the Founders wanted to leave all authority not specifically given to the federal government in The Constitution left for the states and the people.
To this day, the majority of hospitals and clinics are owned and operated by religious organizations, charities, or are operated privately. Likewise the places that are the most effective by far at providing for the needy and things like getting people free from drug and alcohol addictions are private, not government owned.
Hospitals, or the healthcare industry in general, is where we can see some of the clearest distinctions between what is government run or privately run. When “The Affordable Care Act” was implemented by the federal government, the nation was told that it would make healthcare more affordable, but if we wanted to keep our present healthcare policies, and/or our doctors, we could do it. What we found out quickly is that none of those promises were true—prices for healthcare skyrocketed and virtually all current healthcare plans had to be scrapped. Why?
Over-regulation can be as dangerous as under-regulation, and sometimes more dangerous by choking the life out of the cause. Healthcare was already one of the most over-regulated industries, with it not being uncommon for healthcare workers to spend as much as 30% or more of their time just doing paperwork and filling out reports showing compliance with regulations, many of which had little or nothing to do with improving or protecting the quality of healthcare, and most of which would never even be read by anyone.
The Affordable Care Act was several thousand pages, and the pages of regulations added to healthcare by this law were 64,000 pages. These policies and regulations were not written by healthcare workers, and not even by lawmakers, but by staff and bureaucrats who may or may not have known much at all about healthcare. Who could even begin to figure this out much less comply with this madness? How much could actually be saved on the cost of healthcare if these professionals were freed to actually do their jobs?
Regulations are needed to keep us safe and for fair commerce, but the bigger government gets, the more of a crushing weight is put on the people and the systems we require to function and be safe in this world. Where is the balance? This is the distinction between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives want less government; liberals want even more.
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. –Alexander Hamilton
They (the Founders) foresaw that the machinery of government could become too large, that the military could become too weak, that the national debt could spiral out of control, that taxes could become too onerous, that laws could become too cumbersome, and that our efforts to help the poor and educate the young could become misdirected. —Leidner
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