One of the most important differences between the left and the right is how each regards the role and the size of the government.

The left believes that the state should be the most powerful force in society.

Among many other things the government should be in control of educating every child.

Should provide all health care and should regulate often to the minutest detail how businesses conduct their business.

In Germany for instance, the government legislates the time of day stores after clothes.

In short, there should ideally be no power that competes with government.

Not parents, not businesses, not private schools, not religious institutions, not even the individual human conscience.

Conservatives on the other hand believe the government's role in society should be limited to absolute necessities, such as national defense,

and to being the resource of last resort to help citizens who cannot be helped by family, by community, or by religious and secular charities.

Conservatives understand that as governments grow in size and power,

the following will inevitably happen.

One, there will be ever increasing amounts of corruption.

Power and money, breed corruption.

People in government will sell government influence for personal and political gain, and people outside government will seek to buy influence and favors.

In Africa and Latin America, government corruption has been the single biggest factor holding nations back from progressing.

Two, individual liberty will decline.

With a few exceptions, such as an unrestricted right to abortion, individual liberty is less important to the left than to the right.

This is neither an opinion nor a criticism. It is simple logic. The more control the government has over people's lives, the less liberty people have.

Three, countries with ever-expanding governments will either reduce the size of their government or eventually collapse economically.

Every welfare state ultimately becomes a Ponzi scheme, relying on new payers to pay previous payers.

And when it runs out of the new payers, the scheme collapses.

All the welfare states of the world, including wealthy European countries, are already experiencing this problem to varying degrees.

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