What do you consider conservative?

[b]Conservatives:[/b] What makes you a conservative and why?

[b]Liberals:[/b] If you're a liberal, what do you consider it to be and why?

Conservatives: What makes you a conservative and why?

My conservative side comes out when it comes to the history and the insititutions of this country. I have an attitude of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Though I agree with government benefits (social security to the Americans) I am against people being allowed to milk the system and take more than they deserve. Too many people have become too reliant on them under this last Labour government. I am against government waste of taxpayers money. I want to keep the House of Lords, and would prefer to return to how it was before Labour's reforms. I don't care about foxhunting and it doesn't bother me whether people are born to privelege or not. Some left wingers wouldn't vote Tory because David Cameron went to Eton. Personally, I don't care where he went to school or which university he went to, or how his fees were paid. It is irrelevant and I hate that some people are opposed to rich, posh people for no other reason that they are rich and posh. Tough I lean more toward Europe than against it, I am staunchly against the single currency. Oh, and I fly my flag.

If you're a liberal, what do you consider it to be and why?

Conservatism is, put simply, preservation of what is. It is about the traditional institutions of what makes an individual country. It is opposed to change and philosophises that only through keeping society stagnant can keep it strong. For example, in the US true conservatism is about the decentralised republican ideal, secularism (in most cases), freedom of the market and personal freedoms. In the UK, it is about the institutions of the monarchy, the Church of England, the fusing of church and state, preservation of the Union and staying out of the EU.

You flaming right winger!

I prefer the secularist view you brought up. Though i don't have massive disdain for the religious, i don't want it in the public square, so to speak. If a town wants to put up a manger for Xmas, i'm fine with that. That's not the public square i refer to. I refer to teaching the stuff in school for instance.

Our constitution says only that the gov't can't force religion on you in the sense that it can't say, "Hey, we're all Catholics now and you have to go to Mass every Sunday." That's what our religion clause says in a nutshell.

TexasBlue wrote:i don't want it in the public square, so to speak. If a town wants to put up a manger for Xmas, i'm fine with that.

I agree entirely. I don't feel "offended" or "oppressed" by seeing religious imagery at Christmas. Hell, where I was studying, it is a medieval cathedral city. Every year we were down there I visited the Cathedral at Christmas Eve in order to see how it had been decorated. Right wingers here are quick to point out that secularists want to ban Christmas while forgetting that the only person who ever banned Christmas in this country was a Christian... a Puritan by the name of Oliver Cromwell.

Many atheists enjoy the season for what it is. They just don't go into the religious aspect of it here. But there are some atheists here in the USA who would rather see religion eradicated all together... which is wrong on it's face.