Welcome to our home. Here is a gathering place for people like you, who have an interest in both the Liberal and Conservative sides of politics. Please join us in open-minded exploration and thoughtful discussion of the issues.
Why I created this site:
We have both Conservative and Liberal friends. They are generally decent, well-informed people. I have had to ask myself how they could have such different opinions. It turns out that there are multiple reasons for it, and it is a very interesting subject.
Moreover, our country needs us to recognize and reconcile the differences between us. More and more, we are isolated from people who think differently from us. This makes it easier for us to assume that they are just wrong and awful. We don’t have to agree in order to work together. We just have to understand why we disagree, and identify areas of common ground and common purpose.
“Conservatives and Liberals,” rather than “Republicans and Democrats”
The terms “Conservative” and “Liberal” refers to our personalities, values and preferences. “Republican” and “Democrat” refer to political party affiliation. Clearly, there is a lot of overlap. It turns out that not all Republicans are conservative, and not all Democrats are liberal. Other factors such as our impressions of the parties, our financial and social circumstances, and “tribalism” greatly influence which party we belong to. We’ll discuss this further in the sections on “Conservative Does not mean Republican” and “Why We Are Split Into Essentially Two Parties.”
I sometimes refer specifically to Republicans and Democrats, and some of the sources I have utilized refer to Republicans and Democrats, rather than Conservatives and Liberals. I hope this is not confusing.
How this site is organized:
Did I mention that this is a really interesting subject? There is so much to learn about it that I have divided the topics into different sections. You can see them in the posts on the home page.
I have attempted to provide the conservative and liberal points of view on these subjects, and highlight the respective preferences and assumptions that underlie them. In some cases, the assumptions are not consistent with data, and I hope to provide a reasonably unbiased analysis.
Sources of information:
I have gotten my information from multiple books and websites. I have deliberately tried to find diverse sources, and not rely on one sole opinion. As such, some of these sources are not what we would call “official.” On the other hand, there is not a single definitive source for conservative or liberal policy. I’ve looked to statements from past and present politicians, such as Jeff Flake, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, journals such as The Wall Street Journal and Forbes, and organizations like The Heritage Foundation and The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, that generally are considered conservative or liberal. Other sources are not nominally conservative or liberal, such as The Balance, but I have inferred or attributed conservative- or liberal-ness to specific content, based on relations to more overt sources.
Some topics, such as the point of view of business versus that of consumers and labor, I have assigned as conservative vs liberal. Clearly not all businessmen are conservative, and not all consumers are liberal. The interests of business vs those of consumers and laborers tend to be championed by Conservatives and Liberals respectively, by which I have made my attributions.