"Liberals" and "Conservatives"
 

Really now, why do most people think there are only two Political ideologies? For one thing, look at the words.

Conservative (n.): One who favors traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.

Liberal: One who has with liberal ideas or opinions.


Considering this, wouldn't the ideas of these parties change constantly?

Meh, I never liked the words. I always get Authoritarians and Libertarians; and Leftists and Rightists; and Liberals and Conservatives all mixed up. I just say I'm liberal to appease other people.

I always say independant, since I agree with different beliefs in each of the main two parties, but don't agree with all of the beliefs of either of the parties.

You (thread-maker) make a good point, perhaps we should come up with new words to describe the two ideaologies?

Eh, what would changing the words around do?

Across the political spectrum, you don't neccessarily need to give titles. In general terms, people towards the left tend to favor more personal freedom whereas people towards the right tend to favor more economic freedom (and the middle obviously being a balance of some kind between the two), so you really don't need to put labels on everything.

In a different thread on this board, I think is was the "third party" thread, someone said that "the Left Populous believe in an anarchic- militant revolution to overthrow the current government because governments in and of themselves 'breed corruption' and that society would be better off without them" and that "The Marxists believe in a popular revolution to give the power soley back to the people and allow the government only that power which society expressedly gives it" and I know specifically of a movement called "social anarchy" (a bit of a contradiction in itself) which calls for non-violent paths to peace and justice. Even if I have the spirit of revolution in me, it doesn't mean I have to be categorized into one of these things, because I don't agree with all of their principals and ideas.

I know what you're saying VD, but I'm just spouting that I find it really stupid and annoying that the general populus tends to ultimately put someone under the "liberal" or "conservative" umbrella.

I gotcha. I guess some people just feel more comfortable with labels in order to "define" themselves.

In the continuing spirit of my being a party shill :), there's a better political classification system than just "liberal" vs. "conservative". VideoDrone and Funny Looking kinda brought up part of it. Probably the most popular form can be found here:
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html
and there are other sites that give a more thorough explanation of how it works. Basically, rather than just considering whether you want to "keep things the same" vs "change things", ie conservative vs liberal, it rates how much control you want the government to have over your life, and in what areas you want it to have control.

But those questions are so general, they won't prove much. They need to be more specific.