ABSTRACT
The descriptions of conservatism and liberalism in the earlier pages concentrate on the foundational premises and core values that characterize the two worldviews, as well as the central questions and competing answers that create the branches of each ideology. There are other renditions that also reveal important aspects of their perspectives. The ideologies could be described simply as clusters of competing values. This would be accurate, but incomplete. It does not explain why those values fit together. To see the coherence of each ideology, we need to see the underlying beliefs that determine other important value commitments. The ideologies could also be described as specific collections of policy preferences, but again we would be hard pressed to say how they fit together without recognizing the foundational beliefs. Nonetheless, those policy disagreements are important to understand, even though they are the result rather than the basis of the ideologies. This final set of short chapters discusses the two ideologies from the perspective of contemporary value conflicts, divisive issues, and also the emotions that shape each perspective. These chapters also examine important comparisons between the ideologies as well as central divisions within them, specifically the recent split among conservatives between paleocons and neocons, and the rise of multiculturalism as opposed to traditional liberalism.
