True Essence Of Liberalism And How It Improves The Lives Of Countless People

A survey is going around town asking individuals from families how happy they are and to measure how much freedom they feel they have in their household. The families fall under four different categories: Conservative, Anarchist, Liberal and Libertarian. The Conservative household chose to be anonymous. The 16 year old boy says his father can never be wrong and his rule is “law”. The child feels as the family to be property to his father. Everything including the house is in his name since his father is the “breadwinner” and won’t let his wife work.

Overall his happiness is a 5 and feels like he has a bare minimum of freedom. Ambrosia from an Anarchist family rates her happiness an 8, stating she has too much freedom and feel her parents are more like friends than authoritative. Rather than calling her parents mom or dad, they’re called by their names. Thus establishing an “equal” household. At a very young age she was taught sex education from her polyamorous parents who both work at a cooperative breadshop. Alex, a 14 year old trans-boy, says his family identifies as a progressive falling under the liberal branch. He says his parents both work and their house is both names.

Instead of punishing him or his siblings, his parents teach and talk to them so they can learn for themselves. Alex feels he has enough freedom rating his happiness to be a 9.9. Susan a wife of a Libertarian household rates her happiness to be a 7.3. She says her husband pays her bonuses for specific sexual task giving her less reason to be upset with his many other sexual relationships. She believes her kids are happy since they allow them to smoke pot and drink as long as they keep their grades up.

Susan and her husband also choose to free themselves from their children's economic choices believing they’ll have more freedom. Just as these four families run their household similar to their views it also represents how societies are ran starting from the family. Based off these surveys, a Progressive stance creates the most freedom in society. The essence of liberalism, lay in techniques for taming absolute power and using it for its advantage to push for exercising rights judicially, socially and economically.

In regards to exercising rights judicially, Liberalism or the sub-group progressives state people should be able to say, do, or feel as they desire as long as they are not harmful to others. Liberals have insisted that government can take on broader functions without sacrificing individual freedom as long as the law provides strong safeguards against arbitrary power. Historically, America has allowed groups of individuals to be suppressed in multiple forms. Before the Voting Rights act of 1965 was signed, people of color were prevented to exercise their right to vote.

In efforts to get blacks not to vote, officials from polling stations told blacks “that they had gotten the date, time or polling place wrong” (History.com). Blacks, who consequently suffered a high rate of illiteracy due to centuries of segregation,oppression and poverty, often would be forced to take literacy tests. Which every so often, they would fail. Even Blacks with college degrees were turned away. After a month of debate, Congress decided to pass the Voting Rights act. On August 6, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. The act banned literacy test and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections.

With the new act, it gave African-American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and also considerably improved voter turnout in the south. With the passage of the act being an amenable passage of a law, there is still no law that requires a state to have a certain number of polling based on population since the Supreme Court freed states from polling supervision in 2013. Recently the state of Georgia has faced a hefty lawsuit due to voter suppression.

The lawsuit emphasizes voting issues that affected the people of the state including voter purges, registration applications put on hold, and lack of polling stations on Election Day in predominantly non white voting precincts (Lockhart). It seems as so in attempted efforts one step forward can result in two steps back. Georgia’s current election system created an unlawful series of obstructions that are disproportionately likely to deprive, and in some cases completely oppress, voters of color. Taking away voting rights or purposely sabotaging voting stations, oppress people from a voice in their futures and their lives. Officials should not take away the rights of peoples voices, instead they should implement it into society to give everyone an equal say.

In regards to everyone having an equal say, women should be the only ones allowed to comment about their rights. Over years, the controversial topic of abortion have been been in debate on whether or not it should be legal or not. Most people with conservative mindsets believe Abortion is the murder of a human being and as a living human being, has separate rights from those of the mother.

In contrast, progressives believe the decision to have an abortion is a personal choice of a woman regarding her own body and the government must protect this right. Roe v. Wade, was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regulating that the due process clause of the 14th amendment provides a basic “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose whether or not to have abortion. Before the passing of this law, abortion was inaccessible, illegal and unaffordable for many. But with state senators passing legislations, Roe v. Wade is at risk like never before and at stake of being overturned.

The most direct and frightening challenge to Roe v. Wade, is a recent law passed in Alabama. This law aims to “ban abortion at every stage of pregnancy and criminalize the procedure for doctors”(Weissman), who could be charged with state related transgressions and face up to 99 years in prison. This new legislation would only allow mothers to have abortions if their life is at risk, even cases such as rape or incest will not be legal. There is no state in America where the support of banning abortion reaches even 25 percent, sowhy are these laws being passed? The answer is that Alabama has a long history of voter suppression equation to inequality. While this development is certainly a set back, Progressives and activist state that the fight for women's rights and free choice must go on.

In addition to free choice, Liberalism wants to puts a leash on the powers of companies and prevent the market from flooding with avaricious people. Liberty, in an economical view allows individuals to exercise rights and compete with the free market. Liberty without equality perpetuates a cycle that allows for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.

Very recently the corruptness in the developing relationships between investors and government officials have been discussed at dinner tables, in classrooms and on social media. These relationships exist to ensure the success of businesses and to make government officials lean towards the viewpoint of their investors. This results in officials advocating for the passing of legislations that assist the investors companies and detriments the very society they swore to protect in their campaign. The conservatives support of a free market without a leash transgress upon basic democratic representation and aids the dwindling of a society.

On the other hand, Liberals comprehend that while a capitalist economy has worked for us, it is not all that we can resort to. Liberals believe that in order to prevent the relationship of intimate capitalism, control would be necessary. Similar to this, a free market can become very detrimental to the changes America is making for society. In 2008, one of the worst economic disasters since the Great Depression of 1929 occurred. The Great Recession of 2008 saw housing prices fall 31.8 percent, more than the price plunge during the Depression, and unemployment skyrocketed to more than 9%. People of all backgrounds believed this would never happen again, especially due to times being so modern now and started to lose faith once again in the more modern conservatism.

Fortunately for the society, the government had a massive intervention. Congress made a bailout package and disbursed 439.6 billion to resolve the financial crisis. President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, that helped re-establish order in the economic sphere by implementing tax cuts, stimulus checks, and public works spending (Amadeo). The financial crisis of 2008 proved that banks and unchecked capitalism cannot regulate themselves and without government oversight they could create another global crisis. Individuals who are born wealthy in a booming free market tend to thrive while those who are born oppressed and impoverished struggle. Seeing and understanding that injustice is often established at birth, progressives disagree with conservatives that the free market grants egalitarianism.

At the forefront of the conservatives argument, they believe all people from all backgrounds have the same amount of opportunity to be able to prosper in the free market as long as they try. For example, those who believe in capitalism are convinced that with all the benefits the unemployed receive they choose to be jobless. Conservatives are fearful that the government's hand in aiding the impoverished encourage people to become dependent and lazy rather than encourage work. To further establish a foundation for their argument they state that if the market crashes it can fix it self. Consequently, there is no need for the government to implement istelf if the market can fix itself.

Regretably, those stuck in a conservative mindset can not see the oppression and lack of opportunity the free market cast on the disadvantaged. The unemployed simply do not have the opportunity to get out of their predicament because their economy has dug a hole so deep they need a ladder to get out of it. Desmisely their will always be the few who take advantage of welfare, that is why there have been legislation established against those who commit welfare fraud. A marker crash has been proven to not reverse over time without the help of the government as stated before in the great recession. Nevertheless conservatives should know this since few have experienced or know people to file bankruptcy in attempt to recover financial stability. Legislation again and again is mandatory in order to help relieve the hardships individuals experience.

All in all, Liberalism seems to grant a society more freedom rather than other political doctrine. Society advances for freedom when individuals from all backgrounds are permitted to make decisions for themselves and voice their opinion without the intervention of government. This progressive mindset pushes for suppression of voters to be removed since it does not harm others and instead oppresses people born into a disadvantage background.

Moreover, the civic stance establishes that the government should have no input on people's rights and only people can say what goes on with their body. In the economic sphere, Liberalism aids the oppressed individuals by putting a leash on a industrialized markets and business to avert from obstructing democracy to push their own advantage. Liberalism encourages freedom by restraining the government to dip their toes in the waters of a social sphere and use the government to help the disadvantaged in a free-market.