Almost exactly a year ago I wrote an article about the Politics of Labels.

I argued that American politics is really broken down more accurately into 6 categories.  But in most discussions, we end up funneling everything into left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative.  The more simplified you make these labels, the less accurate they are. Yet, it turns out that most people are able to identify themselves into one or the other.

No one is purely a conservative and no one is purely a liberal.  I personally prefer to call myself a Secular Conservative.  But let's face it, once we get into public forums of debate, it doesn't matter what you want to call yourself, you have to deal with the accepted general definitions that are out there lest you get into a pointless semantics debate.

In Europe, liberal and conservative have very different meanings.

So here's my own personal view of what the difference between AMERICAN liberals and AMERICAN conservatives are:

Liberals:

• Believe in social justice.
• Believe in the power of government to produce positive social change.
• Believe that criminals/enemies should be looked at individually but victims should be grouped.
• Believe in a relatively low threshold in which minority rights trump the will of the majority
• Believe in rights being very broad but responsibility being relatively narrow

Conservatives:

• Believe in personal responsibility
• Believe in the power of individuals to produce positive social change
• Believe that victims should be looked at individually but criminals/enemies can be grouped/generalized
• Believe that the will of the majority in almost all cases.
• Believe that the number of absolute rights is relatively small and that each of those rights carries equally important responsibilities.

So there you have it. My own 2 cents on the subject.