Daniel Elazar's Typology Of Political Cultures

When looking at Daniel Elazar's typology of political cultures we see that each of them are very different and have distinctly different views on issues such as education or taxation. Furthermore, living in Texas we see two of the three typologies most frequently: Individualistic and Traditionalistic. An individualistic political culture can be defined by reference.com as a culture in which individual liberties and the right to pursue personal happiness are the dominant concerns and primary political virtues. Whereas, a traditionalistic society is. Furthermore, I would like to examine the political views of these two cultures on the issues of abortion and welfare.
Abortion is a very sensitive topic when examining it in a political sense. An individualistic political culture's views on this issue can be summed up by Pro-Choice. When looking closer at their views, we see that they believe that women have a right to their own choice when it comes to her own body. Individualistic cultures view abortion as a right the government should protect diligently. Additionally, they believe a fetus is not a human so therefore it is not considered a murder. In addition, they push for taxpayer money should go to funding abortions for women who do not have the funds to provide it on their own.

Furthermore, they advocate that women should have a right to legal safe and late-term abortions.
In opposition to individualistic political views, traditionalistic views can be put in the category of Pro-Life.

In the case of abortion, most of the traditionalistic views are often religiously based Their beliefs are that conception is the beginning of a human life, so therefore abortion is a form of murder. Moreover, they do not approve of using taxpayers hard earned money to fund abortions. When looking at the topic of abortion they do not believe that if a woman simply chooses to have sex that she is entitled to the choice of whether her fetus lives or dies because the fetus has an individual right at conception. Additionally, they advocate banning Partial Birth

Abortions.
When looking at the topic of assisting the poor we see that when examining it there are many views, however, there are two distinct views.
Primarily we see that an individualistic culture believes that welfare is essential to our countries growth and assisting the poor. Moreover, people who see politics in this manner, view welfare as a device used to not only assist but protect the less fortunate. This political culture would also argue that having long-term government assistance would help create a type of fairness in today’s economy. Therefore, this culture would argue that this should be a long-term assistance which will allow them to do better in the future.
On the contrary, when examining the views of a traditionalistic society, though they have similar beliefs they are distinctly different. When looking at a traditionalistic political culture they do believe that welfare is helpful to the poor and has been great at assisting Americans, they do not believe it is a flawless system. They view welfare as a short-term assistance allowing people to become self-reliant and have an encouragement to help themselves. This helps ensure that people are able to get back on their feet without becoming dependent on government assistance.
In conclusion, when exploring traditionalistic and individualistic views on politics in today's culture, we see that Texas itself is a very diverse state and has a mix of these two cultures. This, in turn, allows for seeing each side of an argument such as abortion or helping the poor and think about what culture we are most rooted in.