Ideologies in Unknown Accents

The latest topic of discussion in class has been the political ideologies of the 19th century, or liberalism, conservatism and nationalism. More specifically, we have discussed how these ideologies had an impact on the political and social actions at the time. To do this, the class was split into six groups, and each group was given an ideology with which they had to make a one minute project. Each ideology was given to two different groups, as a sort of competition to see who could make the best project. This project could be in any format, as long as it specifically explained how the ideology impacted the political and social actions. After the projects were completed, the class as a whole viewed them and voted on which project they thought was best for each ideology.

The ideology my group covered was liberalism, and the program we chose to use for our project was Chatterpix. In our Chatterpix video, we chose to depict a “conversation” between John Locke and Adam Smith, two British philosophers who are thought to be two of the fathers of liberalism, and a group of young people. In the presentation it is explained that liberals believed in equality for all humans, and believed in change. Because of this, they favored meritocracy over aristocracy, and didn’t believe in many traditions, as they weren’t entirely based on reason and were followed blindly. In addition to this, it was explained that Adam Smith came up with the invisible hand, with the hope that quality would rise and prices would drop. Also, John Locke believed in god-given natural rights and promoted independence and liberty. Liberalism influenced social and political action by favoring meritocracy instead of aristocracy, giving the middle class man a greater chance of success.

The other ideologies covered by other groups were conservatism and nationalism. Conservatives opposed change and thought that change brought bloodshed, as revolutions often did in those times. They thought that what worked in the past would continue to work in the future. As many conservatives were aristocrats, they believed in maintaining an aristocracy in order to keep their social positions. Nationalists believed in the unification of a country, without numerous city-states. In nationalism, people were bound together by culture, language and history. Foreign rulers were expelled from nationalist systems, and the hope was to keep dictators from other countries, such as Napoleon, from taking control. Politically, nationalists were opposed to being under a foreign ruler, while socially, they opposed being part of the same system as people of different cultures, languages and histories.