Doug, rather than being that widely divided, I see "liberal" and "conservative" as a very muddled and confused spectrum—a pretty sloppy continuum.

To call someone a "liberal" or a "conservative" assumes that person holds a particular body of beliefs. When someone puts forth an opinion, if you can label that person one or the other, it makes it too easy to 1) simply dismiss what they're saying; 2) assume that you know everything else they're going to say (and believe); and, quite possibly, 3) ignore them when they're telling you something that you really should think about independently, without trying to make it fit "party principles".

I don't regard myself as either liberal or conservative. I find that both camps tend to agree with me on some things and disagree on others. Believe me, I have a lot of liberal friends and acquaintances who can get pretty outraged by some of my opinions And don't like it much when I bring up certain uncomfortable facts. But facts are neither liberal nor conservative. They're facts.

Out in the realm of real American politics, the supposedly tidy divisions between liberal and conservative simply don't apply. As a matter of fact, I see a nearly complete flip-flop. For example, why is it that it's the "liberals" who are so adamant about defending the Bill of Rights while the "conservatives" are the ones who want to set it aside in the name of national security? Wanting to undercut the Constitution doesn't seem very "conservative" (or patriotic) to me. It's the "conservatives" who want to turn the country's natural resources over to the business so it can be exploited for profit. The "liberals" (often called "wild-eyed" radicals) are the ones who want leave it as it is, to be preserved (conserved) for future generations. According to the traditional beliefs usually ascribed to these labels, I would have thought it would be the other way around. And there are lots of examples of this kind of reversal. I leave it to you as an exercise to root out other such philosophical inconsistencies. Plenty out there.

Don Firth