Andrew Gideon wrote:
"Liberal" vs. "Conservative" involves the
willingless one has to make claims about interpreting the intent of our
Constitution.
A "complete" conservative takes none, and sees but the words. A
"complete" liberal pretends to know the minds of the authors better than
the authors, and therefore takes complete freedom with the words.
Hmm...this is too limited. It ignores that these words can be applied
outside of our country (either geographically or chronologically). For
example, there's this:
http://www.majorcox.com/columns/liberal.htm
which refers to "The liberal idea of religious freedom" in the context of
1620 Europe and America. No U.S. Constitution to be interpreted in that
chronological context.
This explains a lot about the current "conservative" administration,
perhaps.
For an example of greater confusion, see:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1067375/posts
- Andrew