@FearlessFly While Haidt had a solid thesis there, what constitutes liberal or conservative in society may be a bit more complex than what he led on to.

Whenever someone asks me if I'm liberal or conservative, I ask them to define those words first before I answer, and my request at times had baffled some. But I ask that though as there are at least a handful of categories in life that one could be either liberal or conservative on or even a mixture of the two (crossovers). What is it exactly we are either being liberty minded (openminded) on or attempting to conserve?

Off the top of my head I could think of three such categories- economics, how one views our Constitution, and social based issues. The first two I'm fairly conservative on, as I believe in a reasonable budget and no new taxes etc, and believe the Bill of Rights should remain as it is. As for the third category, I'm decidely more liberal, and fully support issues like gay rights/abortion rights for women/decriminalizing recreational drugs and sex work/and keeping religion out of politics etc. Conceivably there could be more categories (foreign affairs?), but I think those are the main three.

So with that in mind, what would you call someone like me? Although two out of the three I'm conservative on, still like to think that I'm mostly liberal and open-minded, in the classic sense anyways. Of course, here in the US there is a name for someone who is fiscally conservative while being socially liberal. It's not liberal, though pretty close to it. Said name is pretty much a curse word on this site (at least in my experience anyways) among the progressive crowd, a name that invokes alot of distrust and resentment and even disinformation from the progressives. I'm not going to say that name here, don't know if any hapless progressives will stumble across this post, and Odin forbid I wouldn't want to upset any of them so much that they get an aneurysm, lol.

Are you psychotic or on drugs to believe that?

Seriously how can you believe that when you do not have comprehensive health, education & housing policies being implemented to ensure the security of your populace?

And you're saying that there is not one law, policy, procedure or practice that favours corporations individually or as a group?

@FrayedBear I consider myself a 'flaming liberal'.

I think Haidt explains it better that me :

[wired.com]

@FearlessFly I'm trying to say that if you drop your political labels & just work from the point of being an intelligent human being you will not make decisions \ pass laws that do not benefit everyone. IMO benefiting everyone starts with all in the world. In such situation USA will not arm or foment violence in USA or other places in the world. Imagine no Korean war, no Vietnam war, no Iraq wars, no Afghanistan war (Russian or US), no Serbia conflict, no Uvalde, no gun homicides, no Waco . . .?

@FrayedBear In the 'blue sky world' I live in, those "imaginations/ideals" don't match "reality" IMO.

I doubt they actually exist (or ever did) anywhere/anytime.

@FearlessFly :

Both dem and repub politicians answer to their campaign funders, probably more to their funders than to unorganized voters/constituents

@yvilletom
You got that right !!!