Quote Originally Posted by Fragony
Common value would be more responsibility for the people instead of an all controlling godzilla of a government. Keep taxes low, government interference to a minimum. Difference is the hammering on religion I guess.
Well, not really! For Germany - as well as for other Western European countries - minimum government is not a common value. People expect from the government:
- protection against crime
- good infrastructure (roads, schools ...)
- social security (health care, pensions ...)
- social balance
Of cause everybody wants to pay less taxes, but only very few, esp. the rich ones, do really want to have minimum interferrence.
The social net is very important especially in Germany. It is a common value, a civilizing achievement of the post war age which is an important part of the German identity. So some parties want to keep it, others want to reform it, but no one wants to abolish it.
With the tasks of government like written above we could also have a socialist government or even fascism. Fortunatelly there are more basic values:
- democracy
- human rights
- refusal of war as a political mean (each kind of war with the exception of self defense)
- free market