BaldEagle - "McGrath, you're illiberal! Can't we disagree on some political aspects without your calling me your enemy? Do you wish to rephrase your previous entry?"

Since I don't want to kill you or lock you up if we disagree, that means I'm reasonably liberal on the definition I gave. Doesn't mean you might not be my enemy. "Love your enemy" implies you've got to have a few enemies in the first place. Just that you don't need to hate them, even when you might be doing your level best to defeat them.

I take it that you're probably a radical on some of the points where I'm a conservative, which was where I used the word "enemy".

I suppose I could have said "adversary", on the lines of the old story about the new member of parliament referring to the people on the other side as "the enemy". "No" says the oldere MP - "they are your adversaries - your enemies are on this side, behind you." But then, on some of the issues I mentioned, the people I'd be against are "on my side", so the term "enemy" seems more appropriate. Anyway it's a word I prefer. Can you imagine Jesus saying "love your adversaries" - doesn't have the right ring to it.

But anyway the point I was making was that the terms "conservative" and "radical" are relative and partial. We are all mixture of the two things, depending on where we live, and when we live, and all minds of other things. (And my other point was that when people use "liberal" as if it was the opposite of "conservative" they are debasing the language. So are people (and there are a lot of them round the world, if not in America) who use it as if it was the opposite of "radical".