The Triadic Ideological Balance of Power in American Government

The American Government is a complex balance of power, based on three main ideological political concepts. This article will explore the complicated relationships between Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism, and how they all affect each other in essential roles in American Government and Society.

   The American government is a carefully balanced one, even though it doesn’t seem like it at times. It is intentionally built on conflicting ideologies in political power, which are perpetually mistrustful of each other. Liberalism, Conservatism, and Socialism are all chained together in different corners of American politics like diverse watchdogs, protecting the house from outside intruders, but also protecting the house from its inhabitants. This system seems dysfunctional, sometimes, especially in modern times, but it is the best system in place that shows the promise of true practical governmental sustainability. All three ideologies if balanced properly serve a vital purpose in the American governmental system, inherited from our nation’s original famous forefathers.

      Liberalism can be compared to the watchdog of individual liberties. The early liberal philosophers of the “State of Nature,” steadfastly indulged in the common man’s “Natural Rights” in society. Liberals wholeheartedly pioneered and promoted public debate on the subject of human God-given liberties in the 17^th century. Liberalist founders such as Thomas Hobbes, also carried these ideologies two hundred years later into the 19th century, along with Utilitarian thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, who believed profoundly in “The harm principle” of,  let no sane man be held back from doing as they wish, as long as they do no harm, or threaten to do harm to others.”  This principle in dealing with our fellow man is a liberal concept, which has still failed to fully mature in modern society. The War on Drugs - The Right to bare Arms - How we deal with our own people, and other nations and different societies abroad, paints a picture of a conflicted America that still believes in the liberty to achieve one’s goals unhindered by governmental bureaucracy, but fears too many freedoms, especially when freedom lands just outside of the ever-changing limits that our government currently allows its citizens.

     Conservatives suggest that a liberal society puts too much trust in the hands of the individual citizen. They are the watchdogs of allowable freedoms. Conservatives believe that some of the freedoms that are handed out across the nation today are eroding the established values of culture, class, and social standing, which, if allowed to continue unchecked, will eventually end up leading the nation into anarchy and lawlessness. Liberals counteract this claim by citing that when liberty is withheld from the majority of the masses, a vast unbalance between the minority rich and the majority poor occurs, and then begins to hinder lower and middle-class social mobility, and equal opportunity for racial and cultural minorities. This Conservative action of limiting the liberties of others, it can be argued, which is usually sponsored by the elitists of America through fear mongering aimed at the nation’s lower class, or as in 2015s presidential GOP nomination contest, towards the Muslim religion, also leads the country into the same unrest, lawlessness, and anarchy that Conservatives fear so much, due to public revolt against the perceived oppressiveness of the American governmental authority to certain races or social classes.  Conservative social agendas are perceived by the Left as being promoted, bought, and sold in American elections by the upper-class status quo; causing social disparity across the entire nation.

     Liberals are of course the watchdogs of Conservatism. Liberalism, it should be noted, is founded by avid Capitalists, even though they are commonly branded by Conservatives as being Socialists, or God forbid, Communists. Although modern Liberals are staunch believers in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they are still conditioned to back away from being associated with Socialism; mostly out of self-preservation. Modern liberals quietly enact the same or similar social programs and public welfare platforms as Socialist and Communist countries, while still adamantly denying  Socialism. The balance to the potential excesses of Liberalism in our mixed form of government,  is, of course, Conservatism. The Conservative ideology professes to be the watchdog of governmental waste, inefficiency, and public abuse, along with being the upholders of traditional moral values, ethics, and social standards. They see their right-wing idealism as being absolutely essential to a healthy well-ordered democratic society. They also see Liberalism as being a constant threat to these Conservative ideals; in their minds, without them, too much liberty would then spread rampantly throughout our country, thus promoting America’s hidden socialist roots, and then turning into evil communism, after first, of course, taking away all of the Conservative’s guns.

     Conservatism is the American security guard which protects the nation against fast-paced social change and too progressive of a government.  Without this Conservative watchdog, the Right fears the erosion of the very social fabric that our forefathers so painstakingly combined together,  in order to form one strong united social piece of interwoven cloth. Traditional ways of thinking about our cultural and community standards of moral and ethical values are the slower but safer road to a sustainable successful society. Conservatives feel that in this way, our governmental bodies will be able to orderly achieve civilized society's ultimate goals and the citizen’s true God-given potential. This Conservative sentiment is echoed in the words of William Wordsworth’s, Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty and Order, that very perilous can be a sweeping change, and that all uncontrolled social chance is dangerously unsound.” This emulates the ideals of modern conservatism today, with its ever-mistrusting, all Seeing Eye, exclusively viewed by republican conservatives, who look suspiciously towards the attempts of liberals to accomplish anything that is deemed too progressive, or too self-serving to the Democratic Party and their liberal agenda. The American conservatives of today fight off these perceived liberal attacks on aristocratic capitalistic society, just as if they are fighting off angry dirty street peasants from the French Revolution - knowing deep inside, that if the traditional aristocratic order should fall to unbridled liberalism, and then into anarchy - The masses will once again come searching for the heads of our nation’s top one percenters, ready to put them on a pike, and then parade them around for all of America to see.

     One of the founders of traditional conservatism, Edmond Burke, adamantly felt that things such as personal freedoms are like a roaring fire, a good thing if it is kept in strict control and is put to good use, but very dangerous if it is left alone and unchecked in the hands of the reckless. Burke, and the traditional followers of Conservatism, all unanimously agreed that liberty is only worthwhile when kept in proper societal order. With a formidable watchdog like Conservatism in charge of our traditional social standards, which are culturally enforced by the modern day republican, it is no wonder why President Obama’s promises of sweeping change failed to materialize. The Conservative watchdog was waiting at the gates between the opposing liberal and conservative ideologies.  Few of Obama’s idealistic campaign promises were able to get past the “dogs” without traditional conservatives biting them to pieces in President Obama’s first term.

     Although the two parties, Conservative and Liberal, (Republican and Democrat) are squarely and perpetually at odds with each other, they also have one thing in common. The universal ground that they both share is in their mutual beliefs in democracy. This is not a common ground in appearance, especially when it comes to some of the Socialist ideas of Liberalism, which are even scarier and more offensive to the sole core beliefs of Conservatism than actual Liberalism is. All three main conceptual ideologies of American politics borrow from each other in several different subtle ways when it comes to democracy. Socialism threatens to totally take everything that traditional capitalism has ever built by their own financial risk and superior knowledge, and then hand it all over to the common masses that conservatism finds so untrustworthy to begin with. This is why the Republican Party believes that they must have their way in all things American, in order to make rational choices and judgments,  given their beliefs in the lower classes flawed human nature, and unruly unpredictability. This is why the separate ideologies of Conservatism and Liberalism can never truly officially meet in public.

     Socialism is in the other two American governmental ideologies in some form or another. In Liberalism, it is in the form of food stamps, social security, and welfare programs. With conservatism, socialism is simply relying on the charity of the private sector in America’s communities, church groups, and organizations, all run by the private donations of wealthy American proprietors of society. Socialism is the watchdog that lies in wait for social unrest, and public dissatisfaction with their own cut of the American Dream. In order to give a hand up to the lower classes, rather than an endless handout, Conservatism ensures that the lazy do not benefit from the diligent.  Socialists feel that the inequality of capitalism is what creates the need for charity in the first place. They also believe that the division between the class systems of capitalism must be overthrown, and that America’s wealth and goods should be distributed equally throughout the masses, in order for the need for charity, and the specter of poverty, hunger, homelessness, social immobility, and public apathy, to actually become a capitalistic consequence of the past.

     The Socialist’s vision of Utopia is devoid of most capitalistic perceptions of private property. This idealistic sentiment is expressed by Thomas More when he states that “Wherever men have private property, and money is the sole measure of everything, it becomes hardly possible for the commonwealth to be governed justly or to flourish in prosperity.”  The leveling of the economic and social playing field is what conservatives fear most in Socialist ideals. The fall of Russian style Soviet Block Communism is an example that is quickly given in criticizing the merits or safety of allowing radical Socialist idealism to flourish and spread in America. It must also be noted that Russia skipped a few steps in Karl Marx’s grand road to utopia,  and the Communist Revolution went straight into dictator mode.  All without the industrialized sector of its society being fully developed yet. When the seizure of state power fell into place after Marx’s “Revolutionary Class Consciousness,” the Russian people were unfortunately still left in not much better shape under Communism, than they were under the Tsarist regime. Some also argue, that if Russia was to try communism again in a better industrial state than it had been during the Russian Revolution, with the modern advances in technology, and more importantly, efficiency in production and distribution, Russian style communism might have fared much better than it did in the 20^th century.

     Socialism in the modern age will scarcely have to go through the dire predictions of Karl Marx’s upheavals and public sufferings, before progressing into the next phases of his roadmap to Utopia. IE: Economic crisis, the immiseration of the proletariat, revolutionary class consciousness, seizure of state power, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the withering away of the state, then finally the Utopia of absolute Communism.  The flaw that we see in Marxist ideology is that Karl Marx used too many absolutes when factoring in the entire World’s human nature factor;  forgetting that people are just as unpredictable by their own self-interests, as they are predictable by their shared nature. Like humans, human nature comes in an endless array of shapes, sizes, and colors. Although we all seem different from each other in many ways, America’s diverse population borrows from and depends upon each other. This is a social concept that all three ideologies agree upon. That’s what makes being American truly unique compared to other societies, and why it has such a great source of public pride in its diverse citizenry, is its ultimate unity in the face of danger and hardships. The Triadic ideological government that our American forefathers painstakingly conceived together is not created equal, but balanced somewhere between Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism, in order to keep our great nation held together tightly by our strengths socially, regardless of how  divided the nation becomes over the turbulent winds of fate or the uncertain spans of time.