[Jeff Gordon]

I want to defeat the left, and I want to do it as quickly as possible.

If your looking for labels, it seems that "anti-liberal" fits your mission best.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I want to defeat the left, and I want to do it as quickly as possible.

If you're looking for labels, it seems that "anti-liberal" fits your mission best.

What you say makes perfect logic, as far as it goes. But I'm dead-set against it, for solid reasons.

First, because the term "liberal" is still associated, everywhere outside the U.S.--and a century ago was associated even here--with precisely the policy perspective which we so-called "conservatives" favor. This was emphasized by F.A. Hayek in a preface to a late edition of The Road to Serfdom. It is entirely against tradition to adopt formally the inverted meaning of "liberalism."

Second, to define ourselves by the left would be to cede to the left the central role, defining "what is" against which we then rail. It is far more true to say that what we in the US now call "liberalism" is nothing but flight from tradition. Tradition and history, the Constitution and so forth, form the net and boundaries which define the tennis game of conservative thought; "liberalism" is mere cynical dismissal of the rules of the game--which as you consider it is what x42's maladministration so consistently, and infuriatingly, modeled.

Conservatives do not shame to recognize that the meanings of words--and even the value of the dollar--boils down simply to a matter of tradition. We rightly scorn those who demand that the burden of proof must always be born by the traditionalist whenever a cynical antitraditionalist comes up with her latest magic elixir to seperate responsibility from authority--designed to seize the authority and leave we-the-people holding the bag of responsibility.

And conservatives recognize the traditional nature of the two-party system and the profound difficulty in reducing the choices placed before the electorate to the manageable binary choice. We thus do not seriously expect that our government will always or even frequently be headed by the very best people for the jobs.

The "liberal," OTOH, promises--needs to promise--exactly that. Because the office the liberal seeks is not that of trustee of a tradition, but of philosopher-king. Which explains why the "liberal" is so dead-set on proclaiming both how smart the Democratic candidate is and how "dumb" the Republican candidate is.