The problem with any terminology is in trying to apply it to a diverse group of people. There are people who some would could be classified as Liberals who favor Communism and class warfare. There are others that I classify as Liberals because they are Statists and believe that the government is the answer to everything. This is the opposite of what I believe to be a Conservative position that the government has a limited role in our lives. Some of the Statists are not advocates of class warfare.The Annoyed Man wrote:Slowplay makes an excellent point. There is a significant difference between a "leftist" and what is referred to as a "classical liberal" in the Locke-ian mold. There is a similar difference between a conservative and a "right winger." If we use the classical definition, then a self-identified conservative is a John Locke liberal, and therefore has much in common with some self-identified liberals. I have been guilty of carelessness in terminology myself, but let me make it clear that in my thinking, a hard core leftist is one who espouses class warfare and socialism and a fundamental remaking of America into something the founders never intended. As such they are no better than either National Socialists or Communists. I am not naive enough to think that describes the majority of self-identified liberals. Neither am I naive enough to think that their favored policies are correct. That is why we have politics.
I'm smiling. I remember one of my high school teachers asking me if I was a Communist. I didn't answer but asked him why he thought to ask me the question. He had heard from one of my classmates that I was. What he didn't hear was that my classmate's view of the world was that anyone who didn't support Barry Goldwater was a Communist. It would have been funny if the teacher hadn't used the power of his position to attempt to publicly humiliate me afterward.
I've always believed what I label the Conservative approach but labels tend to get applied by where someone else's position is relative to yours. There are people who call themselves Conservatives (some of them Evangelicals) who, for whatever reason, are anti-RKBA. It is only on this forum where I've found people who identified themselves as Liberals and supported RKBA. It makes it really difficult to make distinctions among groups when positions shift from topic to topic. I consider myself relatively environmentally conscious but there is no way that I'm going where PETA and some of the environmental loons go. You'll pry my cold dead fingers off my leaf blower before I give it up.
