Liberals, conservatives, etc.: basics for politically naive seminary graduates

True conservatives are 'classical liberals.' What are called 'liberals' today tend to be more in the direction of socialists.

Classical liberals, like the Founding Fathers, tend to highly value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Socialists tend to value collectivism rather than individual liberty, and lording it over people in various ways.

Classical liberals tend to base basic rights in God and the image of God in man. What God gives man can't take away.

Socialists tend to base basic rights in man alone, and what man gives, man can take away.

Classical liberals favor free market economy.

Socialists favor command economies.

The history of either type of economy is very stark and can be accessed by anyone with interest and motivation to learn about it.

All economies are hybrid, but each will have a center-of-gravity in either free market, command, or tradition. (A tradition economy is 'you do what your father does, and military or religion are the only other roads open to an individual other than that.')

Free market economies require a lot of foundational ground work to have been done. Consistent rule of law, enforcement of contracts, a mobile work force (lines of transportation). Educational opportunity. Basic property rights and individual rights, a basic level of good faith behavior, etc.

A command economy devolves into 'strongest monkey' at the top, police-state enforcement of populations, committees of humans determining the price and demand and so on of goods and services, which isn't possible hence incredible ineptness and waste and inefficiency covered over by state-run educational and media propaganda and police intimidation. Etc.

Many people don't like the hurly-burly of living in a free market society. They have slower metabolisms, so to speak. They are confused by it and can't see how to get ahead or what they have to do. This is understandable. But it really only takes the small percentage of movers and shakers, entrepreneurs, inventors, discoverers, creators, builders, high energy types, visionary types to set up things for the less energetic to fall into place within and be able to make a sound living. Socialists attack those people and make it as difficult for them to do their thing as possible. Punitive taxes, abuse of the legal system, propaganda, extortion (community organizing), infiltrating and debasing unions and any other institutions they can infiltrate and debase.

The most hardcore command economies (tyrannies) have elements of a free market system. In the Soviet Union it was the black market that served the higher echelon of soviet leaders, getting them western goods and even services while the proles suffered. Just as the most free of the free market economies have elements of a command economy to serve as checks and balances. Socialists though exploit this to overtake free market economies.

Basically the forces at work are liberty vs. tyranny. Socialism values and always moves in the direction of tyranny. Free markets and the underlying foundation of them move in the direction of and value liberty.

There is also a foundational spiritual element in it all as liberty comes from God. Basic rights such as are found in our founding documents (here in the U.S.) are founded in God and in our being created equal in the eyes of God. People who want to remove God from our nation don't understand what rights and freedom rest on. What man gives man can take away (and usually does). If a 'revolutionary committee' denies me the right to live I can counter that God gives me the right to live, not man. I'm endowed by my Creator with inalienable rights. If you ground your rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in man and man's current philosophy and man's dictate you are basing your rights on a very false foundation that will soon give way. What man gives you man can take away from you, and he usually does, because it is the nature of fallen man to value tyranny over liberty.