Question

In the 1970s, what were the conservative ideas and which benefitted and harmed American society?

Answer 1

Division, not unity, marked conservatism around the world in the first decades of the 21st century, following the loss of the greatest nemesis of the previous 50 years of conservatism, Soviet communism. But maybe the fissure isn't shocking. Anticommunism was the cornerstone that held the conservative movement together and without this common enemy it was all too painfully obvious the many gaps between conservatives. For example, in Europe, conservatives divided on issues like the desirability of a united Europe, the benefits of a single European currency and the proper role of the region in policing troubled areas like the Balkans and the Middle East.

In the United States, politics had become much more fragmented. Abortion, immigration, national sovereignty, "family values," and the "war on terror," both at home and abroad, were among the topics that united supporters but split opponents into separate groups, from neo-conservatives and "paleoconservatives" (descendants of the Old Right, who found neo-conservatives to be socially moderate and imperialist in foreign affairs) to cultural traditionalists within themselves. The camps fought one another as well as their supposed rivals from the 1990s through the first decades of the 21st century in occasional "race wars"

Conservativism, like most American political ideologies, originated from republicanism, which rejected aristocratic and monarchical government and supported the values of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States (which created a democratic republic under the rule of law). Conservative theory is also partly derived from the 18th and 19th century classical liberal tradition, which promoted laissez-faire economics (i.e. , economic independence and deregulation).

This belief in limited government combines with fiscal conservatism to create a wider economic liberalism that wishes to limit government interference in the economy or introduce policies of laissez-faire. This economic liberalism borrows from two schools of thought: the pragmatism of the classical liberals, and the notion of "democracy" of the libertarians. The classical liberal believes that free markets function best, while the liberal believes that free markets are the only ethical markets.