See, to me I've always thought of conservative in terms of "conserving traditions." In other words, keeping things that are traditional. To some, that might be some harmful things (but then, continuing to do things that have caused harm is sort of the definition of idiocy) but in my family, we keep the tradition of growing and nourishing healthy babies. Working for what we have. Earning every step of our way, without looking around and wondering what we're entitled to. Making our abilities count- can we do useful things? Fix a car? Grow a garden? Heal a wound? Can we use every part of the food we grow or hunt for? Composting vegetable matter, using every part of the deer possible that FIL, DH, BIL, and uncles get in the fall. We limit interferance, is a huge thing- politically and socially. Traditionally, conservatives want to keep governmental interferance at a minimum.
Politically, I can get into a whole other series of describers, but that's not for this forum or thread. I can say it's very similar. I think where people get befuddled and confused is that for so many people, Democrat=liberal, and Republican= conservative. While there probably are a great deal of liberals who are Dems and Conservatives who are Republicans, it's not a mutually exclusive deal. In other words, just like beagles are dogs and not all dogs are beagles, not all conservatives are Republicans.
As a conservative (who has taken quite the road to define myself as such), I spend a lot of time thinking about who I am. I don't really know how to (or if I can) qualify what a liberal is, other than loose definition of dynamic and under change. At any rate, in terms of discipline, I have friends that range over the entire political spectrum. I also belonged to a cooking message board that largely self-identified as moderate/liberal, and I can say for darn sure all those ladies were heavily into punitive discipline and CIO and were very snide when it came to my birth choices.
Clara
