Communitarianism is one of those ideologies that you don't commonly hear about too often. It is an ideology that lives in the shadow of liberalism and conservatism, which is disheartening because communitarianism seems to be the best ideology for a society to live by. They are not extremely individualistic as practiced in liberalism, nor are they extremely traditional as conservatism. I believe in communitarianism because they believe that people are naturally compassionate and sociable, but that it is society that makes people selfish and competitive (Lesson on Communitarianism). I also like that communitarians believe that people should live by their own rules and be part of a community, rather than just having personal interests. Finally, for a society, the idea of self-government in which everyone actively participates sounds better than something like an economic democracy expressed in Marxism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay When it comes to human nature, communitarianism believes that people are naturally social and compassionate, but that it is today's society that makes them competitive and greedy. I personally agree with this because competitiveness is advertised everywhere. For example, there are endless television programs like Survivor or American Idol, which portray the competitiveness that conservatism believes in human nature (Communitarianism Lecture), but with the education and skills taught by communitarianism, people will return to being naturally social and compassionate. (Review lesson). Another topic that is a battle between communitarianism and conservatism is the principle of freedom. While communitarians believe that people should be able to live by their own rules, conservatives believe that people should stick to customs and traditions. As long as people live by rules that benefit the community, communitarians believe that you should live by the rules you want and that you should not limit yourself to traditional roles. Traditional roles supported by conservatives such as having a religion and having traditional values such as the mother staying at home, while the father earns (Conservatism Lecture). Government, in the eyes of communities, is not an important key, but it is more important to have a civil society. When government comes into play, a direct democracy is the best solution to maintain a good and healthy society (Lesson on communitarianism). Since the fundamental principle of communitarianism is communities and being active within them, having a strong direct democracy is important to ensure that everyone's voices are heard. With this type of government, citizens have access to more information as they “seek to curb the role of private money, special interests, and corruption in government” (Etzioni p. 36). The ideology that would most oppose this idea of government would undoubtedly be anarchism. For anarchism, the government as a whole represents a huge threat to society and should be overthrown and removed as soon as possible, so that society can be healthy and functional. Anarchists believe that government or centralization takes away people's natural ability to make their own decisions and in a sense brainwashes citizens into believing that there is no other way to run society (Goodman p. 52). Although anarchists advocate this, communitarians focus on not having a large centralized government, but rather small, self-governing communities that focus on making sure everyone actively participates and makes their voices heard. In the end,)..
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