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Originally Posted by dda
I can see that the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are rather on end compared to the way some look at them.
In America "liberal" seems to be a liberal use of government power. One of the interesting things is that "liberals" in America tend to espouse freedom of speech as an ideal. However, they then do everything they can to shout down or intimidate any who use that freedom to disagree with them.
In America, "Liberal" does not seem to have much to do with liberty.
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I think its a mistake to look for ideological coherence when it comes to mainstream politics, or to try and investigate the essence of liberalism or conservatism in the context of major political parties (whether in the UK or the USA). Modern political parties are based on pragmatism rather than principles; the ultimate aim of most parties and politicians is to get elected, with the question of what they will do when they get there relegated to secondary status. Because there are generally two parties competiting for power at any given time, the standard result is that political positions get distilled into two extremely simplistic binary alternatives, with each of the major parties eventually being associated with one 'side' of the issue.
The question of which team ends up on which side of the debate is often arbitrary; theres no logical reason why people who (eg) support abortion rights should also support gun control and increased taxes on the wealthy, and the fact that these positions now go together under the banner of 'liberalism'/'progressivism' is a result of historical contingency rather than because theres any unifying principle linking them (gun control is an especially interesting case; during the early 20th century, it was the 'right' who supported gun control in the UK while the 'left' opposed it, since they believed that the government was using gun control to decrease the problems caused by militant trade unionists. Nowadays, this same argument that guns provide a line of defence against oppressive government is used by those on the 'right', and mocked by those on the 'left'). Mainstream political positions are generally an assortment of barely related single-issues, bundled into un-unified wholes and consumed as ready-maked packages. The only place youre likely to find attempts at ideological coherence are on the 'fringes' of politics, where there is less focus on pragmatism since getting elected isnt such a primary concern (normally because it isnt likely to happen).
This unrelenting pragmatism is reflected in the electorate, with most people choosing their issue-positions based either on party lines (the Democrats oppose gun control, I am a Democrat, ergo I should oppose gun control), or based on the unprincipled short-term pragmatism which is pretty much the defining aspect of modern middle-class 'liberalism', which centres around the belief that "as long as something doesnt adversely affect me in the short-term, who cares?". The short-sightedness of the middle classes towards anything which doesnt directly impinge on their day-to-day lives, and the associated refusal to think in principles or consider bigger pictures, is imo responsible for a huge amount of shitty political practices over the last 100 years and was nicely summed up by Ultimate Newbie earlier in the thread:
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Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie
I personally dont have much concern about the government having my personal information or other forms of privacy. I still believe that compared to banks and/or insurance companies, the government are still amateurs. Nevertheless, due to my strong economic conservatism, i still see that the role of governments to be simplified to correcting market failures (including provisions for public goods like defence), as well as providing basic services for a fee. The fee doesnt have to be large, but it is necessary to prevent complete free riding. Overarching all government activities, however, should be the concept of "common sense" - if it makes sense for a government agency to do xyz rather than privately, then do so; to avoid unnecessarily sticking to some ideological dogma (of small government), governments should not be afraid to act to a perceived injustice or inequity that is not reflective of the society that makes it up. If children are dying, then act.
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The debates over the recent smoking bans are also a really great example of this kind of short-sighted pragmatism too, since pretty much every discussion about it eventually ended up as "I want to be able to smoke in pubs" vs "I would enjoy my nights out more if people didnt smoke".