Liberals and Conservatives

Of the three to five places I posted this, it seems someone misunderstood what I was saying in each place. So I'll be more verbose than 140 characters...

"Liberal" denotes a philosophy where law is aggressively formed and applied to address observed problems. "Conservative" denotes a philosophy where new law may be formed and applied, but not aggressively; This philosophy tends to prefer solutions that do not involve the creation of new law.

My assertion was that people who subscribe to the conservative philosophy would subscribe to the liberal philosophy if they didn't already have what they want; I.e. if they weren't comfortable with the status quo as it currently enabled them. I might go so far as to say that both of these philosophies are moderate ones. The non-moderate form of conservatism using this measurement metric might be libertarianism or anarchism; The idea that law needs to be repealed in a general sense until there is little or no government law in effect. The non-moderate form of liberalism is totalitarianism; The idea that the Government knows best*, and so they should regulate everything.

And "independents?" A misnomer in this context. I'm not talking about political parties, I'm talking about political philosophies.

Granted, all generalizations are false**. It's simply something to think about.

Me? I'm not liberal or conservative. I'm not red or blue. I'm not Republican or Democrat. And though I'm not a card-carrying member of any party, I won't call myself an "independent"...Most independents seem to me to be unofficial and unaware party members. I'm jaded enough about the parties in power and the colors on the tickets that I don't think there's any party that fits more than a third of my personal views.

* Including this one.
** The reasoning for "government knows best" varies from perspective to perspective. It might be "government knows best because it's a representative democracy, and thus carries the will of the People", or it might be "government knows best because scientists and economists drive the decisions." There are other reasons for non-government people to think "government knows best".