Democrats and Liberals; Republicans and Conservatives

One of the problems that i have noticed in some of the debates I have is the misuse of equating a political party with a certain lifeview. IE- interchanging the use of democrat with liberal and republican with conservative. They aren't necessarily the same thing and its silly to think that. The is highly important when attributing things to a party and then corrolating to all member of that party. If the Republican party says something, especially a face of that party, then that does not mean that is something a conservative would say. Ward Churchill is not an elected official so nobody should say that he speaks for the democratic party. I wouldn't even say that Jim McDermitt, a congressman from Washington St. speaks for them as he is not a face of the party. But even if he was, his views cannot be extrapolated to liberals as a whole.

Liberals are a diverse group of people, example being that Joe Lieberman and Ted Kennedy are both liberals. On the flip, Dick Cheney and John McCain and Rudy Guiliani are all conservatives and obviously they are very very different in their views. I don't think its fair to equate them all together. As conservatives. There are obviously lots of topics that break down by party line. But the use of conservative really only applies to the outlook on government involvment at a federal leval. Same with liberal. Now that mindset might be indicative to other areas to a degree, its not substantial enough that you can equate the two.

So in the future, don't talk about conservatives when you mean Republicans. I don't usually mean all democrats when i say democrats because there are exceptions. I do mean the majority of the establishment though.