I don't understand how liberal became a bad word.
It's what the U.S.A. is actually founded on:

1. We liberated ourselves from religeous persecution.
2. We liberated ourselves from a non-representative gov't.
3. We liberated a lot of land (rightly or wrongly from the peoples already there)
4. We finally got around to liberating the slaves.
5. We liberated Texas (might have been a mistake).
6. We liberated Spanish territories in the "new world".
7. We "helped" liberate Europe (WWI)
8. We helped re-liberate Europe (WWII)

I could go on,
In between we attempted to liberate our people from ignorance, fear, poverty, starvation, etc.

Why would we wan't to go back?

And the term conservative only applies to so called "majority" values.
The conservatives don't believe in conservation. They believe in exploitation (should they be called the Exploitatives?)