[William_H_Dougherty]

What if the "tradition" of the country is "social progress" and "expanding and defending human rights"?

Canadian Tories - Abolished Slavery in Canada 50 years before your Civil War.
Canadian Tories - Allowed Black Men the Right to vote just Prior to your Civil War.
Canadian Tories - First extended the right of women to vote during World War I.
Canadian Tories - Established the CBC and CRTC, and most of the public infrastructure around the country, from Canada Post to Canada Rail, to the ROM, to the Roads.
Canadian Tories - Against the opposition of the Canadian Liberals, brought in Canada's first Bill of Rights, a version of which is now enshrined in the Canadian Constitution (the Charter).

As a Canadian, I support that "tradition", and that would therefore make me a "conservative" would it not?

- WHD

[Jordan9]

Oh, goodness, some of this was hard to read. Mostly AgentSteel's posts.

What we need to keep in mind is that terms like "liberal" and "conservative" don't exist in vacuums. Like "heavy" and "light". If I have an elephant and a feather, you can easily pick out the heavy one. If I have two elephants, well, it might be more complicated.

Additionally, contemporary incarnations of "liberal" and "conservative" are much, much different than when they first came into popular use. As was alluded to by BassHole, conservatism has taken on many aspects of what was once liberalism (free markets, a desire for less intrusive governments, etc.) Conversely, "Liberalism" has taken on some of the aspects that were once abhorred by the original liberals (things like affirmative action come to mind, government intervention, etc.)

And yes, like Rei Murasame has alluded to, even the American Conservatives have their roots in Liberalism, which is why there is a crap-ton (a term about as specific as "heavy" "liberal" or "conservative") of overlap between the two.