I thought about this while perusing the "Folk songs for Conservatives" thread.

The words "conservative and liberal" are often thrown out to describe someone's political viewpoint, but it has occured to me that I personally know very few folks who would fit either description consistently. Many of my "political" friends would be pretty liberal socially, but fiscally quite conservative, and there are some (like me) who are all over the map...with seemingly very contradictory views on issues that some see as related.

Of course in Canada we have the "Liberal" party and the (Progressive) "Conservative" party, which many think are idealogically very close. The New Democrats and Canadian Alliance parties in theory represent the farther "Left" and "right", but are still very mainstream when compared to the splits in most other countries.

I'm just curious how Mudcatters would define "conservative" and "liberal" as it applies to them personally. Certainly in the 60s many "folkies" were quite liberal, but most that I know of have tempered a lot of their views as they got older. Any thoughts?

Rick