If you believe that America is best described as a purposeful expression of historical achievements by certain culture, and race, and as a set of moral values codified in a specific religions text, and that society is best ordered by a top-down, obedience to authority arrangement modeled by Monotheism and archaic rights of property—then, broadly speaking, you are probably more conservative and lean Republican.
If you believe that America is best described as an expression of ideas, developed almost entirely from the Enlightenment, which, in principle, strive to respect the inherent integrity of all human beings, and which are codified in a legal documents called the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as “…all men are created equal,” and if you believe that society is best ordered by a loose, bottom up collective nexus of diverse and ongoing opinions within a free marketplace of ideas---then, broadly speaking, you are probably more liberal and lean Democrat.
Actually, it seems most people fall somewhere along a spectrum of the above. What I find interesting, as I converse with various individuals, is how many are unaware of the above distinctions and struggle to define the basic ideological difference at stake in our current cultural wars.
For me, the central question at the heart of the conflict---as it was in both our Revolutionary War and Civil War---is always the same: Who will rule, and by what basis?
Will rule be by powerful individuals among faux aristocrats, clergy, banking and corporate interests, immense individual wealth? etc. i.e., the “private sector,” based on a top-down chain of being social order and the rights of private sector?
Or will rule be “by consent of the governed”; that is, the “public sector”: based on modern Civil Law as codified in the Constitution?
You can probably infer from the above that I assign Republicans as the former and Democrats as the latter.
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