Explaining "Liberal" and "Conservative"

Given that I am involved explaining the difference between and the meanings of the terms Conservative and Liberal to several different people, I thought I'd just post this concise, simple explanation here as a general reference.

There is some confusion about what the terms Liberal and Conservative mean. I can't think why. It is perfectly simple. Let me explain:

Liberal used to mean open-minded, tolerant, generous. In the 18th century these ideas were considered dangerous. Once they were adopted by the general population, they were no longer considered Liberal. They were just the regular opinions of common folk. But the people who had enjoyed being dangerous, anti-establishment Liberals didn't like sharing the ideas of the regular common folk, so they stopped being tolerant and open-minded, and these Liberals became mean, intolerant, closed-minded and thin-skinned—just the opposite of the boring common people. When they realized nobody thought of them as dangerous, just grumpy, these Liberals started calling themselves Progressives. But Progressive means to progress, and since progress is the one thing that Progressives are against, whether it's in business or science or growth or wealth, Progressive now just means a Liberal who is against progress in any form that actually benefits mankind, is very intolerant of anyone who disagrees with him, refuses to consider another point of view, and is very easily offended.

Now, Conservative is even simpler:

Conservative, as the word itself implies, means to "conserve" something. The tricky thing is to decipher exactly what it is being conserved. When and where are key elements here.

Thomas Jefferson was a Liberal, when Liberal meant liberal: open-minded, tolerant, generous. He was for the ideals of individual freedom, self-government. American Conservatives of the time were against the idea of individual freedom and self-government. They believed that monarchies were best, and that aristocrats did a better job of running things than the rabble would do. So a Conservative in the 18th Century was a "Royalist", standing firm for Tradition and Monarchy against the Liberal Republican Revolutionaries.

Now, when the War of Independence established the Liberal Revolutionary Republican ideals as the Founding Traditon of the new American nation, being an American Conservative meant preserving those founding principles and ideals. People who began the War as Liberal Revolutionary Republicans ended the War as Conservative American Republicans!

Being an American Conservative before 1776 meant supporting the Traditional Monarchy against the new Liberal Republican Revolutionaries. But being an American Conservative after 1776, meant preserving the Liberal Revolutionary Republican Ideals and Principles upon which the new United States of America was founded.

So in summation: Liberal used to mean supporting the Liberal Revolutionary Republican Ideals and Principles upon which the United States of America was founded—but only before it was founded. Now it means supporting anything that undermines them, because they have become Traditional and Liberals are traditionally against Tradition. Conservative used to mean being against the Liberal Revolutionary Republican Ideals and Principles upon which the United States of America was founded—but only before it was founded, because it undermined the Tradition of monarchy, which its Conservative supporters were trying to conserve. But once the Liberal Revolutionary Republican Ideals and Principles became the founding Tradition of America, Conservatism meant conserving these Liberal Revolutionary Republican Ideals and Principles.

See how simple? It's all perfectly clear.

The Gunslinger