Adam Chapnick, who now does a lot of thinking for the Department of National Defence, wrote a paper a few years ago that I just ran across today. The paper — “Peace, Order, and Good Government” — is a brief, revisionist review of Canadian foreign policy. It first appeared in International Journal, the publication of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs and was well received. In it, Chapnick lays out what I think is a very useful 'test', if you will, to determine who's a liberal — emphasis on the small-l — and who's a conservative — same lower-case emphasis:
Small-l liberals believe that individuals are rational beings and that their sense of reason will eventually prevail over their emotional inclinations. This rationality, liberals maintain, and humankind's ability to manage ill-conceived impulses, suggests that people are generally capable of looking after themselves. Liberals therefore promote and support individual freedom…
Small-c conservatives are less confident in humankind's potential. They believe that emotion and irrational impulses are powerful and potentially destructive forces in society. Consequently they feel comfortable granting states significant powers of intervention into the lives of their citizens. To conservatives, society must be understood as a collective whole, as opposed to the liberal “aggregation of individuals”.
So the Liberals are conservatives and the Conservatives are liberals?
maybe the liberal biased media is trying to define themselves as conservatives so they feel better about their lousy contribution to society.