politicalparties

      Some of the philosophical ideas and ways of thinking can be found still today in
the platforms of the current Democratic and Republican political parties of the United
States.
      The Democrats carry the ideal that all people should be socially and financially
equal in a way similar to that of the Revolutionary Enlightenment thinkers. They want the
distance between the rich and the poor to decrease. They advance this part of their
idealogical platform by advocating programs that give assistance to people who are sick,
elderly, or without employment or skill. In this, they differ greatly from the French
Revolutionaries who would take the property of the rich to be divided or sold to the lower
classes, but the intention and result are the same.
      The Republicans are very Lockian in the belief that institutions create problems.
Republicans believe that citizens should be responsible for themselves. The Party believes
that the government should only do what is absolutely necesarry - only those things that
people cannot do for themselves, just as Locke believes the government has only those
powers that the people give it.
      Both parties are very much like the conservative thinkers, such as Burke and
Maistre. Although these political parties believe different things, neither proposes
revolution in order to accomplish their platforms. They believe, as did those conservatives,
that things should change and be different than they are. But, they believe that the changes
should be slow and calculated by the intelectual elite who are in the policy making
positions of the Executive and Legislative branches of government.
      It should be noted, however, they are also like the Enlightenment thinkers in that
they believed everyone, including the lowest of the common people should be able to be
involved in government through a representative system in which all people have an
influence on who makes up the policy making elite.

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