Mr Khan said:
Liberal and conservative is all relative, hence why the classical definition is no longer valid (or has shifted to other names, hence classical liberalism becoming libertarianism or objectivism). Like in the Soviet Union, when the country was unravelling, it was the hardcore Communists who were the conservatives, and the free-market, pro-nationalist, pro-religion folks who were the liberals (closer again to classical liberalism, but still...), but the constant for that is that the conservative wants to preserve the "old" order or some aspect of it. It's when you take them out of context that their political classification changes, and then the ability to evaluate them psychologically becomes more of a chore (given that if you picked up an American Conservative Republican from the '50s and dropped him in the Soviet Union in the late '80s, his values would make him a Liberal of that time and place, but his psychological state would remain the same) |
Don't even need to go that far for an example.
A typical American Democrat "liberal" politician dropped into an EU country would be considered so conservative as to be unelectable. Like Obama's stance on, for example, healthcare, welfare, abortion or online gambling.
