Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

There are only 2 Parties so everyone has to squeeze their political values into one or the other no matter how awkward the fit, but how do they know which is the closest? Usually, a person joins the Party their parents belonged to then fumble around trying to describe what values they believe in. The Party Platforms also provide some guidance for determining values but almost no one reads the Platform, or even knows what's in it. There's also the fact that the Parties switched what they stood for a couple times. Whichever Party is in power, especially if it's for a long time, becomes understandably vested in the status quo; even bad ideas have momentum. The other Party, trying to regain power, takes the other side of the bad ideas to gin up votes, even if their stance is counter to what it was a few decades ago.

Republicans equate values to morals, which is usually based in religion. Right now, but not for the first time, the Democratic Party is increasingly dominated by Collectivists, whose primary value is that the needs of the group supersede the wants of any individual, and there's a lot of Collectivism in the New Testament, which is why most Democrats argue they also represent moral values. Libertarians are shoehorned into the Republican Party, so anyone from that substantial camp is anti-government, while Democrats see government as a positive. Mostly people use their base self-interest to distinguish the two Parties, and it comes down to one issue: taxes; Democrats for because they primarily receive the benefits, Republicans against because they primarily pay them. Other values, like abortion and guns, are secondary.