Liberal vs. Conservative Part 1

This is part 1 taken from a series of YouTube videos that I am doing with my son.

Many mistakenly think that the difference between liberals and conservatives is what they care about. For example if I were to ask you- what do liberals care about, you might say- the poor, the environment, education, clean energy and other problems in society?

Thinking about it this way leads people to believe what they hear in the media that conservatives don't care about those things that they want to have dirty air and water; they are OK with poor education and so forth.  The reality is that both liberals and conservatives care about these same issues…

If that is true then what really is the difference?  It all comes down to how liberals and conservatives believe that these topics should be addressed.

Today I'm only going to focus on one main difference between liberals and conservatives (in the next installment we will discuss some other topics).  The liberal philosophy, when it comes to the environment, education, or any of the topics of the day, is all about the government. They believe that the government should be larger, have more power, control the economy and manage the lives of the people. 

Conservatives on the other hand believe in limited government and that the purpose of government is not to have power over our lives or control over the economy, but that government exists to protect our rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Conservatives believe that the important topics of our day can be addressed better outside of government intervention and control.

Let's look at energy as an example. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter (a liberal) signed legislation creating the department of energy. Initially the DOE was tasked with making the US energy independent…  Let see it has been 35 years and the DOE budget goes up every year significantly growing the size of the government and adding volumes of regulations and controls onto every company in the energy industry, but we are no closer today at being energy independent than we were then.  The liberal idea we hear much of today is that the government should “invest” in “clean” or “renewable” energy, and that sounds so good what could possibly be an issue with that?  In a free market system (supported by conservatives) technology winners and losers are determined by the market- which is to say by whatever technology is economically viable (whatever technology can deliver the energy for the lowest cost).  This one is highly important, because energy is the life-blood of the economy.  If we want a strong growing economy we must have cheap abundant energy.  The liberal view, however, is that the government should pick winners and losers based on some higher or more enlightened values (really it is based on political favorites), but what we end up with instead is wasted taxpayer money and higher energy costs.  The Solyndra debacle is the poster child for what happens when the government tries to pick winners- we waste 500 million dollars and the company goes out of business.  In my state we are installing windmills at a break-neck pace, and I'm sure this makes many feel warm and fuzzy when they see these windmill farms stretching out in the horizon, but the fact is that wind power is not economically viable in a free market environment, so they get installed with government subsidies and the government tells the local power companies that they have to use the power from these wind farms.  In my state the power company is now asking for special tax incentives to offset the higher costs of having to utilize these wind farms.

So, we have two major differing views on how to address the major topics of the day. Which one is right? If you look at the results… they speak for themselves.  The examples of big government failures are piling up all around the world.

Where do you stand?