The difference between "republican/conservative" and "democrat/socialist"?

I'm not American, but I am studying American politics at school.

There are two major parties in America, the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans tend to have a more right wing leaning, with more religious viewpoints and socially and economically conservative policies. They are against government 'interference' in capitalism - like a national healthcare system, for example and they are less socially progressive, favouring religious 'morals' over what some would call good sense.

The Democrats are more left wing on most things, with a much less religious backing. They favour psuedo-socialist policies on things like healthcare, which they support the nationalisation of, and tend to be more socially progressive, supporting forward thinking policies such as gay marriage.

 

Everything you need to know about US government is below
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all you really need to know is that neither party can effectively explain why they are right.

democrats try to do everything at once *my personal view, and I am a democrat, is that they are tyring to do everything with healthcare, and thats wrong right after we just started recovering from the previous administration economic policies*, and open goverement more to the people and for the people.

Republicans try to hold back and reign in goverment and to deregulate goverments influence on american lives except in the case of holding back social progress, which they view was destroying the country *examples being interracial marriage, civil rights, woman voting, woman being allowed to work, and equel rights laws, none of which have destoryed america yet* They view a small goverment as ideal, and examples being deregulating banks, wall street, healthcare, education, lenders, etc. they feel that if the goverment has too much involvement, then americans will suffer because goverment regulations do not allow growth of the econamy.

Both are full of crap... and in 8 years, the reigns will likely shift back to the right when people get tired of the democrats... a vicious cycle that proves only one thing... what america needs is in the middle, not to the far extremes.

oh, and socializem, nazism, and communisem in america are terms thrown around when one side doesnt have a proper arguement to make. america has never had a administration that has come close to emboding the definitions of those words, and even now, we are far from any of those by a long shot. they are words used to scare people.

 

I've noticed this! A lot of Americans I've spoken to - including online - don't seem to actually know what socialism, communism, fascism, nazism, marxism etc are. At various times I've seen them all used as equivalents, and I've seen an awful lot of people define the UK as one of these. Just for the record - the UK is NOT socialist or communist LOL.

 

mmhmm. speaking of the UK For the record, Américains, Canada FAR FROM socialist. We were much closer to a socialist nation in the 80s thank you very much, and a Mulroney era has effectively killed socialist leanings. Sure we have free health care, sure we pay high taxes, sure our public schools can sometimes envy our private ones... ... still, any nation that has as fully accepted neo-liberalism as Canada has, does NOT deserve to be named socialist.

o.o SOUTH AFRICA !!! what`s political climate there like?
wikipedia searches tell of ANC dominated politics. most parties are socio-democratic... what else?

 

politicions are a necessary evil, but evil non-the-less. if only we could make lobbyist illegal, we might be in a better place.

 

I'm not sure that I would call politicians evil. I honestly believe that some (granted not all) of our politicians got into politics because they wanted to make the world a better place (i.e. Obama, both of the Clintons, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy). They've consistently shown a level of caring for Americans and the world at large that's pretty far from evil.

That being said, our political system is pretty heavily flawed. Corporations and the rich can control politicians, because they fund the campaigns of the politicians who make our laws. Lobbying has gotten pretty ridiculous. A political system controlled by the money of a small percent of the population is pretty close to "evil," but that doesn't mean that there can't be good people working within that system to try and do the best they can with what they have.

 

I have yet to see a person in politics that truly has a full on amercan centric agenda. Ted kennedy is one of the few who gets close, and obama and lincoln are not far behind.

the main problem is that politicions are bought and sold too much.

Republicans get millions each by big corprorations every year to deregulate and give massive tax breaks to. In turn, these companies do whatever the hell they want, and we end up reaping the benifit of deregulated wall street, healthcare, banks, lenders, manafacturing industries, and mortage companies... meaning, the world econamy get flushed down the toilet as does the livelyhoods of tens of millions of americans while the ceos, cfos, and board memebers of said companies continue to make millions while they let their companies go bankrupt.

Democrats try to help the american people, but often try to do too much, if not everything all at once. They try to enact needed changes in sweeping fashions, and do things out of order. the best bet would have been to give a tax break to middle and lower class, and give a tax hike to the 3 percent who have been getting rich off the economic ruin they were seeding by demanding deregulation so that they can turn an even higher profit.

It has been shown that if we properly regulate buisnesses to ensure they do not fleece the econamy, and that the tax code is made fair, we could seriously reduce the need and number of people on welfare. there are people on welfare because they are lazy, but hundreds of thousands of familys have been forced onto welfare because they lost their jobs to deregulation of regulations that protected them.

If a person cant live on 250k a year, screw them... there are hardworking americans trying to live 15-20k a year, and they were shafted by the previous admistration... and I wish I could say the current one is doing enough to help, but they really arent doing much in that area.

it is not about socialist handouts... american has never been a socialist state, and democrats arent pushing anthing remotely definable as socialisem. it is about removing all the unfair things things that have been put in place by conservatives that have destoryed our econamy and widened the poverty gap making it impossible for about 85% of america to even have a chance as it currently stands, to acheive the american dream.