You may have put your finger on why Independent5 is undecided. He may have values in terms of fairness, but not in terms of an underlying political philosophy, if he is truly what he says he is.
Hence his hope that government can be the intsrument of utopia and fairness. Unfortunately, letting government be that instrument requires that it have awesome and total power.
I can't speak for Independent5, but I think that hope is the crux of well-meaning liberalism.
Ironically, though, it's a really a dark view of human nature. Marxism (and its disguised variants) assumes a closed economic system where everyone profits at everyone else's expense. The solution? Redistribution at gunpoint. How liberal!
Capitalism assumes a growing and progressing economy where everyone can improve himself. That's a more hopeful view by far.