Welcome to the right (in both senses of the word) side, rogerv.
Going to cut and paste something that I posted a while back, explaining, in kind of simplistic terms, what I see as the difference between the modern American conservative and the modern American liberal. Just the personal view of the opposition offered by one member of the vast right wing conspiracy …
Liberals claim to despise tyrants, oligarchs, and militarists, and to champion the sanctity of life and human equality.
Yet they are the same ideologues who, no matter which of his many nefarious, treasonous, self-serving, immoral behaviors they were asked to comment on or write about, found some convoluted method to explain away the behavior of William Jefferson Clinton -- the epitome of the modern day American oligarch (one who exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes), and tyrant (one who governs by means of executive order, circumvents the Constitution, and bypasses the other two branches of government). And the only militarists that liberals despise are those who desire to promote a strong military so as to maintain America's national security.
We conservatives champion protecting freedom … period. And we do not focus principally on the freedoms of minorities and special interest groups. We focus on the freedom of mankind.
Liberals champion the so-called freedoms of minorities and special interest groups exclusively, simply for the purpose of expanding their own base of power. The liberties of men who are not members of those two groups are considered expendable – even threatening. Liberals champion the cause of women, racial/ethnic minorities, homosexuals, and the like, not in order to seek equality for them, but to seek special privilege for them, so as to make up for past 'injustices' (some of which are real; others of which are fabricated for agenda-driven purposes). And they expect the rest of us to relinquish our freedoms, or give of our tax dollars, for symbolic reparations (for either real or imagined injustices) to those minorities, few of whom we ourselves have ever harmed, or repressed, in any way. They expect the rest of us to do more regarding homosexuals than to allow them to behave in whatever way they choose behind closed doors. They want us to accept the homosexual lifestyle as 'alternate, yet equal,' and, worse yet, they want us to teach our children to be tolerant of perversion.
They purport to value human life and they contend that capital punishment is cruel and unusual. Yet they do not define as murder a killing that takes place at the culmination of a nine-month pregnancy, and at the end of a woman's birth canal. They do not define as murder the puncturing of the skull of a soon-to-be newborn baby, and the subsequent destruction of his brain. No, that is not murder -- that simply the logical extension the convoluted definition of a woman's rights mentioned above.
To borrow a phrase from Orwell, to a liberal, some women are more equal than others. A twenty-year-old irresponsible, conscienceless woman who has decided that she no longer wants the child growing within her is way more equal than the female child who simply yearns for the opportunity to live and breathe that God bequeathed to her at the moment of conception.
This is where liberals go wrong. They take a pleasant/noble/altruistic sounding credo, which appeals to liberty-loving people, and they stretch it to such an extreme that it not only becomes unrecognizable, but it transforms into the antithesis of their original intent. And the most insidious thing of all is that, in most cases, that convolution was their covert purpose to begin with. They are devious hypocrites who count on the fact that those they target for duping (1) will fall for their glib, mock-philanthropic verbiage (it's for the children), (2) will have short memories (i.e., will be unable to remember their original intent), and (3) will not notice that their freedoms are being removed in order to implement those (so-called) noble intentions.
In reality, liberals are simply members of the self-proclaimed cultural elite, a self-anointed group of megalomaniacs who think they know better than we peons what is good for us. They pontificate regarding justice and equality, and yet they practice and tolerate injustice and promote inequality. Just look at their Clinton years. They turned a blind eye to illegal, immoral, treasonous behaviors by none other than the leader of the free world (simply because he is one of them). They allowed him and his minions to destroy the lives of anyone who stood in the way of his legacy building (just ask Gennifer Flowers, or Paula Jones, or Juanita Broaddrick, or Billy Dale, or Linda Tripp). They champion the cause of class warfare among their countrymen. They seek to pit us one against another. And, when they can get away with it, they eradicate small pockets of those of us who dare defy them (just ask the surviving Davidians, or Randy Weaver).
That they have the audacity to call themselves 'liberals' is an abomination as well. 'Liberalism,' during the founding of America represented the antithesis of their political ideology. The first American 'liberals' were men who not only spoke of liberty and equality, but who sought and sacrificed for its realization. Yet modern day 'liberals' (who are really nothing more than socialist demagogues) simply employ the 'liberal' label (to its detriment) as a convenient smokescreen.
The most abominable goal that liberals seek is the repression of the human spirit. They seek (from the rest of us) sameness, mediocrity, and eventual dependence and subjugation. And they seek it at the cost of human striving, human excellence, human dignity, human spirituality, and human liberty.
I shall live here, in my own house. I shall take my food from the earth by the toil of my own hands. I shall learn many secrets from my books. Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild the achievements of the past, and open the way to carry them further, the achievements which are open to me, but closed forever to my brothers, for their minds are shackled to the weakest and dullest ones among them.....Rand in 'Anthem'
~ joanie
Merry Christmas!