Defining Liberal and Conservative

Websters dictionary defines the following words as:

Liberal: belonging to the people, free, generous, tolerant of views differing from one's own, favoring reform or progress as in religion, education, etc; specif. favoring political reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual; progressive.

Instead of banding around the word liberal it would be wise to actually know the meaning of the word and ask yourself how the word liberal came to be denigrated by the far right pundits and their minions.

Conservative: conserving or tending to conserve; preservative. Tending to preserve established traditions or institutions, and to resist or oppose any change in these.

Discerning citizens should be able to understand that both philosophies have tenets that the American people hold dear and are indeed important and essential for the kind of goverernment they wish to have. We have a tremendous amount of agreement in what we believe belying the dissension and division that the radical right propagates. Generous, tolerant, conserve, preserve. Do these words have a meaning we can agree on? We should reject the panderers of false and specious disinformation.