Conservative, conservative, Liberal, liberal. I'm confused?

Question

It was explained to me that Conservative, conservative, Liberal, and liberal all have different meanings.
The word Conservative (upper case C) refers to the Republican party. As the word Liberal (upper case L) refers to the Democratic party.
However, conservative (lower case) refers to a philosophy in which there is high taxation and big government. And liberal (lower case) is a philosophy with no taxation and no government control.
Therefore, a Liberal is actually a conservative. A Conservative would actually be a moderate. The only liberal party would be Libertarian.
Agh! This makes up down and down up.
Any Political Science majors care to clear this up?

Answer 1

YOu know, I'm confused too.
I hate branding names and pigeon holing people.

To me, it seems like a tactic used to discredit what the other side has to say.
It's very unfortunate.

Answer 2

In Canada the two major political parties are Liberal and Conservative. The Conservative for a while were the Progressive Conservatives (the PC Party?) but they screwed up real bad and another party started up called the Reform Party, they were right wing. This split the vote on the right wing enough to destroy the Conservatives so they and the Reform Party joined up in a merger and became the Conservative party. They decided to be Conservatives because nobdy would vote for Reform Neo Conservative right wing Christan white only rednecks who had a bad habit of saying insulting things about over half the people in the country, but would vote for the New Conservative Party who say the same things.
Of course we also have a Communist Party, a New Democratic Party (Socialist) , a Quebec federal Separatist Party, a Socialist Party (social democrat).
Those are most but not all of our Federal parties.
There are also the Provincial Government parties many of which have the same names but are often fighting against the policies of the Federal Party of the same name, and then there is a whole mess of Provincial parties with no intent to be federal.
We also have some moderate liberals, liberal conservatives, conservative liberals and so on, not to mention democratic communists.
We do not have a Democratic party in our democratic government. We also do not have a republican party but Prime Minister Harper is trying Very hard to be one (he was leader of the Reform party until they bought out the Conservative party who are the Official Government)
Right now we have a minority government. Neither the libs or Cons got enough seats to make a majority in the house of commons so they have to do what the New Democratic Party(socialists) tell them to.
Our Liberals tend to be conservative, our Conservatives tended to be liberal, but the Reformed Conservatives are really republicans.
I almost forgot to mention that back in the eighties we had a Rhino Party, they ran as a party party, they disolved because it looked like they might win one year, and that would have cut into their party time

I know this is not likely to help you understand US politics, but at least you will not be confused about Canadian politics.

Answer 3

Liberal is a euphemism for marxist. The term (as was the term progressive) was specifically adopted to cover up the movements working on behalf of hostile communist and socialist governments with incredible histories of human rights violations, including genocide (note that the liberal movement has, time and time again, aided them politically by blocking intervention from countries like the United States).

The term conservative has come to mean those who oppose liberals, and not much else.

Hope that helps clear up the matter.

Answer 4

I think that those might be the technical terms but they are probably no longer accepted as a general view, or used in general political discussions in such a way

Answer 5

Your question is confusing.

I'm a far left liberal.