Decided to look up some definitions for liberalism and conservatism...Started with Encyclopedia Brittanica...and found....
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labor movement - organized labor unions in the U.S., and their history. At the turn of the century, only about 3 percent of the country's labor force belonged to unions. Up to the 1930s, unions were actively suppressed by employers. Workers inclined towards organizing were often fired and blacklisted, and sometimes even beaten up or locked out of the plant. The courts often ruled that union attempts to increase wages and influence working conditions through strikes and picketing were illegal. But membership grew nonetheless, especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s. By the 1960s, over 30 percent of the labor force was unionized. Since then membership has declined, in part because of the decline of highly unionized industries such as railways and the clothing trade, and the increase in white-collar workers, who have less of a tendency to organize than blue-collar workers. By 1990, the percentage of the labor force that was unionized dropped to about 18 percent. The political influence of the labor movement has declined accordingly.
leftist - a person or group that adheres to the left-wing on political issues. Often used to describe insurgents, as in leftist guerrillas.
left-wing - on the left of the political spectrum. The term can include communism, socialism, or liberalism. It originated in the seating arrangements in nineteenth century European parliaments, where the conservatives would sit on the right side of a semi-circle (as seen from the point of view of the presiding officer, often the king) and the socialists on the left. The more radical the group, the further to the left they sat.
Left-wingers advocate generous spending on the welfare state, vigorously promote the rights of women and minorities, are suspicious of high spending on defense, tend to be internationalist in outlook, favor government controls on the free market system, and generally favor social welfare over business interests. In the U.S. the left-wing is not a major factor in national politics, as far as elections are concerned. The Democratic party has some left-wing adherents, but it tries to minimize their influence when election time comes round, since in the U.S., left-wing policies are generally vote-losers. Left-wing groups however, often form powerful interest groups that do exert influence on particular issues. See also communism; liberal; liberalism; Marxism; socialism.
Leninism - the modern form of Marxism as developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924). Lenin led the uprising that overthrew the Russian government in the October Revolution of 1917. He applied Marxism to the new kinds of capitalism that had developed since Marx's day, such as the increasing concentration of capital in larger organizations of producers. Lenin believed that the constant search for raw materials, driven by the need to make a profit, resulted in imperialist policies that led to recurrent wars. The state was merely a tool of the ruling class and therefore had to be destroyed. One of the distinctive aspects of Leninism was the creation of the party, a disciplined group of revolutionaries who would act as the vanguard of the proletariat. Lenin did not believe that capitalism would collapse merely through the weight of economic forces-there had to be a catalyst, and this was the party. Through the party, Lenin justified extreme measures for seizing and consolidating power, and laid the basis for the authoritarianism that transformed the Soviet Union into a dictatorship and kept all power in the hands of the communist party (where it remained until as recently as1991). Thus the original Marxist idea that the state would gradually wither away turned out to be the opposite of the truth-the power of the state continued to grow and grow.
Leninist - an adherent of Leninism.
liberal - in political speech now in the U.S. a liberal is a person who believes it is the duty of government to ameliorate social conditions and create a more equitable society. Liberals favor generous spending on the welfare state; they exhibit a concern for minorities, the poor, and the disadvantaged and often see these conditions as a product of social injustices rather than individual failings. This also applies to crime and juvenile delinquency, where liberals are as concerned with removing the social causes of such behavior as they are with detection and punishment. Liberals also tend to be concerned about environmental issues, the defense of civil liberties, and do not favor excessive military spending. The label of liberal is something that many politicans now seek to avoid, since it is out of keeping with the public mood. In the presidential campaign of 1988 George Bush used this to telling advantage, labeling his Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis a liberal, and making the term sound subversive and un-American. President Clinton tried to distance himself from traditional liberalism in his campaign of 1992, calling himself a New Democrat instead. See also liberalism.
liberalism - in the nineteenth century in Europe, the great age of liberalism, the term stood for freedom from church and state authority and the reduction of the power of royalty and aristocracy, free enterprise economics, and the free development of the individual. Liberalism advocated freedom of the press, religious toleration, self-determination for nations. It was liberalism that established parliamentary democracy. The Founding Fathers might be termed liberals. In the twentieth century, liberal parties were caught in between conservatives and socialists and their influence declined. Today, liberalism stands for something rather different than it did in the nineteenth century (more government rather than less government). See also liberal.
limited government - the clarion call of the mid-1990s in the U.S., a limited government is one that does not have enormous power. Such a government is in fact provided for in the constitution, with its methods of checks and balances. However, many argue that over the last three decades the federal government has become too big, taking on more responsibilities and powers than the constitution intended, and created a huge bureaucracy that is unresponsive to public needs. It is this that has led to calls for a more limited, smaller, central government.
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