Liberalism, Conservatism, and Nationalism

For the past couple of days in class we have been learning about political ideologies and their impact on social and political action. An ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. It can also be the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual. The three ideologies we learned about were liberalism, conservatism, and nationalism. In class, we were put into groups and given an ideology to become experts on. My group was assigned liberalism. We started by reading an article on our ideology, and then created a 1 minute presentation describing it.

Our project on Liberalism in the 19th century.

Our project was a Common Craft video describing liberalism, and the influence it had on social and political action in the 19th century. We defined liberalism as a system that supported individual rights, innovation and reform. It disapproved of absolutism and aristocracy. Liberals believed everyone had god-given natural rights, and no one could tell anyone what rights they had based on their social status. Socially, liberalism led to a system of meritocracy, where people were rewarded based on their skills and abilities, and everyone had a chance to change their social class. Politically, liberalism gave way to the idea that government did not have rule over everything, and economic laws would guide people in society.

The other two ideologies we learned about were conservatism and nationalism. Conservatives, in contrast to liberals, did not support innovation and reform. They wanted to keep the church and the monarchies in power, and their belief was that what worked in the past was the best. They didn't want change because they believed that chaos and revolutions would be the result. Different from both liberalism and conservatism, nationalists believed that they should bring together nations with shared ideas. They thought that people with the same ideals and beliefs should unite under one government because it would make them stronger. All three of these ideologies each have a different system of beliefs, but they all had an impact on the political and social system in 19th century Europe.