At Rider 70 percent of the students believe they know their political affiliation 66 percent of those people can list the beliefs of their political party.
“Most people have no idea what their political ideologies are, and it takes them to find out if they conservative or liberal to find out how they feel about politics,” Government teacher Debra Goodman said.
Knowing your political beliefs is important for students Goodman said.
“I think it’s important because if they don’t know what they believe then if some guy says this about Democrats or some guy says this about Republicans they’ll accept anything that’s said to them,” Goodman said. “How do you know who your associating with and what they’re representing in that political party if you don’t know what your political ideology is. For example, right now you have a person running in the primaries for the Republicans who for years ran as a Libertarian, so what does it mean? Libertarian or Republican or Conservative?”
Goodman said the views of Democrats are usually polar opposites of the views of Republicans.
“A big issue is feelings on abortion. Democrats are pro-choice and Republicans are pro-life,” Goodman said. “Democrats typically spend more on social programs and less on military.
Republicans spend more on the military and less on social programs.
Democrats are demand side economics–they give tax cuts to the consumers, where Republicans are typically supply side–they give tax cuts to corporations and hopefully it’ll trickle down into the consumers.
Republicans believe in the death penalty, Democrats are against it.
Republicans are against gun control; however, Democrats are for gun control.
Democrats believe prayer should not be in school because of separation of church and state, and Republicans believe prayer should be allowed in school.”
The majority of people nation wide are moderates.
“Some students believe they are conservative and find out they are moderate or a liberal,” Goodman said. “Most people nation wide believe they are conservative in their mind, but operationally every day they are more moderate or liberal.”
Republican and Democratic parties have changed over the years.
“The Republican party began back in 1854 as a one single issue vote: it was abolitionist,” Goodman said. “The Democratic party was made up of mostly farmers and was traced back to Thomas Jefferson. During the Civil War it split into northern and southern Democrats, one was pro slavery and the other was containment of slavery.
“In 1932 you had an election with Franklin D. Roosevelt which voters switched from Republican party to the Democratic party, because of the Great Depression, they voted for FDR (a Democrat) and his New Deal. Even minorities who were originally Republican abolitionists switched from the Republican party to the Democratic party which had been pro slavery.
“Also prior to the Reagan election in 1980 the south had been very Pro Democrat. After the election the south was primarily Republican because of conservative family values.”