What is the "true meaning" of conservative,and liberal?

Question

I see two viewpoints that are not that different in nature.Please elaborate.

Answer 1

they are the same coin just two sides. both are failures. neither has produced any good result for the people of the united states for at least twenty five years

Answer 2

At a literal level-

Liberals want change, conservatives don't.

It's best to define them against their given time. These days the two parties are so close that it's hard to tell. Political ideas aren't based on conservative or liberal premises... there are two parties with two sets of donors. And since both can't be on the same side, they tend to take sides on issues without any real basis of political ideology.

I guess the only real liberal/conservative debate is over taxes. In that debate there is a defecit and a debt that must be paid. Conservatives favor less taxes in hope that the economy generates more revenue. Liberals favor more taxes in hope that the revenue taken won't damage the economy. Both are long term ideas that take more than 8 years to play out, and both ideas have good and bad consequences based on how the economy actually plays out.

Answer 3

Today, the basic dictionary definitions no longer apply. Here in a nutshell is the difference:

Conservative, right wing, strongly committed to the Constitutional limitations on the Federal Government. Strongly object to high taxes and big spending especially in areas not specifically approved by the Constitution. Firmly believe in Moral Absolutism. Strong belief that all men are endowed by basic rights by the Creator not by any government; rights than are unalienable. Conservatives believe in the American Culture of the "Rugged Individualist" that has created, improved and maintained this as the freest and most successful country on earth. They believe men should be free of Government regulation or interference to the greatest degree possible. Conservatives believe men are basically evil and dangerous creatures that must be taught to be good and moral individuals. Conservatives believe a strong military is necessary for the defense of Ameria and her allies and a deterrent to aggression.

Liberals, left wing, believe the Constitution is a "living document" or can be interpreted in whatever way suits the current cultural thinking by liberal Supreme Court Justices rather than properly amended. Liberals belive in moral relativism where right and wrong can be re-interpreted according to current socital requirements. They believe in a more socialist style of government where a powerful central government controls, regulates and imposes its will to the benefit of all. Liberals sort people by groups and grievances. They believe in the redistribution of wealth. They perceive high taxes as "investments" in the future. They believe men are born good and if they behave badly it is attributable to societal failure. Liberals see the military as primarily the cause of more problems than solutions. Liberals are often quoted as lamenting the cost of weapons systems vs. how many poor people could benefit from the funds. They are much more likely to depend on diplomacy and appeasement than the use of force.

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Answer 4

Conservative values are
a secure border, small government, low taxes, family values, right to bare arms, pro-life, no special privileges for any group, no handouts.

And liberals are the exact opposite of all of those positive qualities.

Answer 5

Conservatives=Americans
Liberals= Commies
!~!

Answer 6

conservative in beliefs on such issues as abortions etc.(like people shouldnt have them)
liberal beliefs you believe on out of the box type issues such as gay marriage etc.and its ok to adopt kids being gay etc.

Answer 7

A conservative lives by the dollar bill, and will take food out of the mouths of babies, while a Liberal lives by truth and honesty.

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Answer 8

You won't get a correct answer as those are subjective labels.

Answer 9

From: “How Conservatism Guided America's Founding”

What Conservatives Believe-
Conservatism is not an ideology or a program—its programmatic content varies with place and time—but a set of values and an attitude toward changes in the established social order. Its opposite is not any particular dogmatic secular religion—such as communism or socialism—but dogmatic secular religion itself.

Peter Viereck once defined conservatism as "the political secularization of the doctrine of original sin." Eric Voegelin defined its opposite as the political secularization of the heresy of gnosticism.

Edmund Burke distinguished between "abstraction," or a priori reasoning divorced from or contrary to history and experience, and "principles," or sound general ideas derived from observation of human nature throughout time and space. Thus, despite the diversity inherent in conservatism, some principles may be delineated as having been held in common by conservatives from the eighteenth century through the twentieth.

A fundamental principle concerns morality. Conservatives believe that there are basic, universal, and eternal moral truths. They are not unanimous as to the source of these moral truths: most believe that they are ordained by God, but non-theists among them attribute the origin to the natural order. All agree, however, that good and evil are equally real, that every adult human except the mentally enfeebled is endowed with a moral sense that enables him to distinguish right from wrong, and that man's universal religious instinct is the truest foundation of the social order.

Conservatives are also concerned with morality in another sense of the term: morality as mores or social custom. Many moral values are peculiar to individual societies, and even the transcending moral values may be delimited or refined by social norms. "Thou shalt not kill," for instance, is a universal mandate, but no society interprets it to forbid absolutely the destruction of any living thing, animal or vegetable. Moreover, virtually every society makes exceptions even within the human species; most conservatives would hold that the commandment does not apply to self-defense, to defense of family and the innocent, and to legally sanctioned defense of one's country. Similarly, though incest is universally prohibited, the degree of kinship necessary to invoke the injunction vales from society to society, as does the way kinship is reckoned. Thus there are both absolute and relative moral values. The two are inevitably and sometimes confusingly related, meaning that bona fide moral dilemmas do arise.

Conservative attitudes toward morality give rise to a profound concern for the necessity of freedom. As a creature with a moral sense and as one endowed with free will, man can choose between moral and immoral behavior—but he is responsible for the consequences of his actions. Government and society, to be moral, must allow individuals the freedom necessary for them to be responsible. How much liberty is desirable beyond this minimum varies with the force and nature of social custom in each political regime. In general, liberty flows .not from the extent of popular participation in law-making but from the extent that a people is habitually law-abiding: law is the fountain of liberty.

The conservative believes in justice tempered by equity, and he does not confuse the two. At its core, justice has to do with predictability and with the sense of security it provides. There are rules of acceptable behavior, known or knowable to all, and the rules carry with them rewards and punishments, also known or knowable. Few conservatives are so confident of their own rectitude that they would prefer strict and unvarying justice ("I cry for my country," Jefferson is reported to have said, "when I contemplate the possibility that there may be a just God"), and accordingly they believe that justice should be tempered with mercy, compassion, equity. But they also believe, with Blackstone, that "the liberty of considering all cases in an equitable light must not be indulged too far, lest thereby we destroy all law—And law without equity, though hard and disagreeable, is much more desirable for the public good, than equity without law: which would make every judge a legislator, and introduce most infinite confusion."

Paralleling the conservative's attitude toward law and justice is his view of society. Conservatives believe that social continuity is crucial and that, while a just society must allow for the dignity of its individual members, the needs of society itself are primary.They base this position upon recognition of the human condition: the long period of dependency during infancy and childhood dictates that mankind cannot subsist without society. But there is an ever-present tension between the social instincts and the instincts for self-gratification. It is the function of social institutions to temper individual instincts in the interests of social instincts and to convince the citizen of the primacy of the needs of the group. That social institutions normally, if imperfectly, do perform this function is attested by history: when circumstances make it necessary people overcome even the powerful instinct of self-preservation and willingly sacrifice themselves to preserve the society of which they are a part.

The relationship between society and government evokes the conservative principle of the desirability of variety, diversity, plurality, inequality. People differ from one another in various ways—ethnicity, sex, age, ability, class, wealth. If the results of any of these group differences should jeopardize the health of the entire body politic, government may legitimately intervene; but otherwise such diversity and inequality, as natural concomitants of the human condition, are either outside the province of government or entitled to its protection.

Another conservative principle is that of prescription: that there are rights and obligations which rest upon "immemorial usage, so that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." Over the course of time, we have acquired habits, conventions, and customs which are woven unconsciously into the very fabric of our being. Conservatives believe that, in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, man tampers with these or replaces them with more "rational" substitutes at his mortal peril.

Indeed, conservatives apply the principle of prudence to all change. They recognize that not every ill of society can be cured and that an incautiously applied remedy can be worse than the disease. The need for prudence can be expressed in terms of the underlying law of ecology: you cannot change just one thing. To make any change, however rational, in an immensely diverse, intricate, and interconnected social organism is necessarily to make changes affecting other parts and the whole, often in entirely irrational and unforseen ways. Prudence requires that one take into account, as far as possible, the long-range multiple consequences of any proposed action.

Finally, the prudent conservative recognizes that concrete situations may sometimes make principles inconsistent, internally or one with another. In such circumstances one makes choices from the available options on the basis of a priority of values, and, if possible, leaves open the door to change the course if it turns out to be wrong.

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You should really read the entirety of the essay to get it all.