What is "Conservative"

Okay so this is my first post, so I plan on keeping my full feelings back for a bit and doing something a little more... theological.... by that I mean rather than ranting against a person or a group of people I plan on focusing my blog on the idea of being completely liberal or completely conservative. You will see above that I included a link to the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of Conservative, I will be building all my points off of definition 3a because the other two just don't do it for me.


According to Mr.Merriam conservative is : "taking or disposed to maintaining existing views, conditions, or institutions." So what exactly does that mean? Well to me that means one who wants to keep what we have at the moment. Here is my example: Abortion is pretty much legal across the United States, now if you grab a normal conservative (Say John McCain for example) he or she would say that conservatives are against Abortion. Now following Mr.Merriam's definition of conservative, Pro Life would now be a liberal view. Now here is where it gets confusing....

Whatever is in practice is immediately a conservative view, while whatever is not in practice should be considered liberal. So here is the question I am trying to get out... Can one person ever be truly Conservative, or truly Liberal without rapidly changing views? It's a valid question, but one that I plan on answering.

Barack Obama is our President, and the "Conservatives" say he is "the most liberal person ever we shall all die" before breaking into hysterics and crying like a baby. But really by the time he gets out of office these same cry-baby conservatives will be (If Senor Obama's plan works) "the most liberal person[people] ever."

Now I'm not here to debate whether or not Obama will make a good President, I'll save that for later, but rather to propose the idea that there really should be no named split in people's views because really if we label me as Conservative and you as Liberal that could all change in a matter of days. Now I do understand the idea of Republican and Democrat, but the idea that one has to be liberal, while the other has to be conservative is appalling to say the least.

Now I realize I really have chased my tail around for the past couple of paragraphs, so here is what I wanted to say: There is no true conservative, nor any true liberal, but rather we are all just people repressed by the idea that one has to fit squarely into one ever changing category. I mean, if you have a heart beat you have the right to an opinion right? Who says your opinion should be defined as this or that though? Really it's unfair to my opinions to shove them into these tidy little conservative/liberal shoe boxes and expect them to be able to thrive to their full potential.... Am I the only one who thinks this way? Please give me your thoughts