Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor

To understand American democratic society is to understand how liberalism and conservatism apply citizenship to individual rights.

Although they have had different party affiliations throughout America’s history, as I describe in Why did the Parties Switch to Conservative & Liberal?, today, the Democratic Party represents liberalism and the Republicans, conservatism.

Liberalism, as practiced by the Democratic Party, recognizes that diverse groups can strengthen our democracy. However, liberalism, as an economic philosophy, emphasizes individuals’ right to control their property as they wish, aligning with conservative beliefs. This is an example of how both philosophies hold sometimes competing beliefs.

Liberals have always protected individualism, dating back to the influence of the Enlightenment on our nation’s founders. It began with the right of individuals to interpret the Bible directly without being interpreted by the Roman Catholic Church or a monarch.

Conservatives supported the status quo; in the Middle Ages, it was to abide by the distribution of power and rights. Part of that orientation was to align with the local community’s beliefs and prejudices.

Liberals, not conservatives, believe individuals should have equal rights across all communities. That extension allows greater participation in determining government policies. Broadening citizenship is a step toward creating a universal democracy rather than one stratified by groups having different rights.

Liberalism has amended the Constitution to accommodate the needs of individuals in unrepresented communities. Consequently, liberals have been more successful than conservatives in altering America’s society. Expanding citizenship rights to new communities is a prominent conservative concern in the twenty-first century, but it stretches back over a hundred years.

Diversification allowed three huge communities to be eligible to vote.

President Andrew Jackson opened the gate to diversity by changing how we select our national representatives. He was the first major presidential candidate to call for “universal” suffrage, ending the property requirements that barred small landholding, mainly white male farmers, from voting.

Jackson gave rise to the Democratic Party by allowing white males to vote regardless of whether they lacked property in various states. Jackson’s efforts pushed voting participation from 360,000 in 2024 to 1.2 million in 2028. It enabled him to win the presidency after losing it by a close margin in the prior election.

However, that process was not completed within all states until 1856 when, in effect, all white men, including migrants and transients, had the right to vote. The 1860 election of Lincoln saw a total of 4.7 million voters. In the........

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