Tom McLaughlin [05/27/2005]

By Tom McLaughlin

What is a liberal? What is a conservative? What does it mean to be left wing? Right wing? The words and phrases are used often whenever politics are discussed, but they can have different meanings for different people. If I expect my students to become engaged in the political process, and I do because its one of the things Im charged with as a social studies teacher, they must become familiar with how those terms are generally understood.Most come to me knowing little or nothing about differences between Democrats and Republicans, much less other parties to the left or right. They do, however, have opinions about certain issues, like gun control, abortion, the war against radical Islam, et cetera. So, I made a list of issues on the blackboard, starting with government. Under that, I put immigration, welfare and education. Students suggested others via a brainstorming session, like gun control and abortion. Finally, euthanasia, taxes, business, unions, the military, and homosexual marriage were added for a total of 12 issues in a vertical list on the left-hand side of the board.Horizontally, across the top of the board, I wrote the following:Radical, Left-Wing, Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, Right-Wing, Radical.Directly underneath, I wrote Communist under Radical on the left. Next to it, under Left-Wing, I wrote Green Party. Under Liberal I wrote Democrat Party. That brought us to Moderate which I situated right above the space between Democrat Party and Republican Party. The Republicans were under Conservative. The Libertarians were under Right-Wing, (which Im not entirely comfortable with because they dont fit neatly there). Lastly, under Radical on the right, I put Nazis.The emerging chart was still meaningless to students until we filled in the position each party took on each issue. We did that together, since the parties all have web sites now and my students all have laptops connected to the web. That was easy enough, but the hard part was describing party positions with as few words as possible in order to keep the whole chart on one standard-sized piece of paper. On the issue of business, for example, the Communist position is Against private business. The Green position is Keep business small. The Democrats would Control business. Republicans and Libertarians would Leave business alone and Nazis would Control business. Next to the issue of abortion, all parties had the position of Supports abortion, except the Republicans, who were Against abortion. It was the same with euthanasia.Eventually, the entire chart was filled in. In cases where the political party was small or relatively new, such as the Nazis or the Green Party, there was no discernible position on taxes. We were unable to find out the Libertarian position on unions or the military either. In such cases, we put Unknown. I typed it all up and made copies for students to study and to determine where they fit on the political spectrum.What they discovered about themselves is that, like most other Americans, they were all over the chart. I told them that most thinking citizens dont line up with a particular party on every issue, but tend to have scattered opinions just like they did. Thoughtful voters tended to vote for the candidate of the party that reflected their positions on the issues most important to them. I also pointed out that Democrat Howard Dean didnt agree with his own party on gun control, and that Republican President George Bush was not following his partys positions on immigration or limited government.On the test, they had to decide which party they agreed with most and accurately list three of that partys positions on issues they agreed with. Then they had to name the party they disagreed with most and three reasons why.Lastly, I explained how we could superimpose a bell curve over the chart because most Americans were either Democrat or Republican, and very few belonged to parties on the radical left or radical right. Later in the school year, I refer back to the chart when studying the communist takeover of Russia that formed the Soviet Union. In that case, the bell curve no longer applied as the Russian population shifted radically left. Then, when the Nazis took over Germany, that country shifted radically right. Stability is historically threatened when the bell curve is altered and political opinion of a countrys population moves too far in either direction. When thats happened, millions of people died. Tom McLaughlin is a teacher and columnist who lives in Lovell, Maine. He can be reached at tommclaughlin@pivot.net.