Category:Liberal, Conservative, or Progressive

What does it mean to be a liberal or a conservative or a progressive?

Most of us have a ready impression in our minds of what these terms mean today. They had different meanings 100 and more years ago. Today most of us identify the terms with political parties - liberals and progressives with the Democrats and Conservatives with Republicans. That is a reasonable identification as the terms are used today. There is some overlap in the middle, but not much and it seems that there is less overlap as time goes on. Nonetheless, the meanings of the terms are somewhat vague.

The fact is, the political spectrum is just that - a spectrum - with people at the far left, the far right, and just about every possible point in between. Some claim to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal and vice-versa. Many have strong opinions about only one or two issues that would place them in one camp or the other while caring little about the many other issues. We say little about libertarians, but they are an interesting bunch in that they have positions that appeal to today's conservatives and some that appeal to today's liberals. (Perhaps an outside contributory will write a good objective article about it. If so, assign it to this category.)

CW uses the term "liberal" in a number of articles. In those cases its meaning is taken from what it originally meant to be liberal. Therefore, CW sees a need to say what that meaning is as well as what we mean by conservative. Simply put, "liberal" is someone dedicated to liberty and the kind of government and government policy that maximizes liberty (or freedom) and "conservative" is someone who is adverse to change in political structure, institution, and policy. We recognize that today's uses of these terms are different. But today's usages are also vague on one hand and stereotyped on the other. We take on these differences and define our meaning because we do not want to be stereotyped. We are dedicated to liberty (or freedom if you prefer) and that is not neatly captured in the terms as they are used today.