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Comment by nephihaha | Hacker News Reader

Americans have changed/reversed a lot of political definitions including conservative/liberal.

To be fair liberal and conservative is still used in it's actual sense whenever I hear it here in central Europe. US politics is barely a topic, even less something people actually care about.

I wish I could say the same here. People seem to have forgotten what the word liberal is supposed to mean. There is a local Liberal tradition which has very little to do with modern usage.

How has conservative changed?

In the original sense, a "conservative" was someone who avoided change and only made it after careful consideration. Chesterton's fence is a commonly given example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

The word "conservative" is currently being applied to the Republican party, who are reforming the US as hard and fast as they can manage, without careful consideration. A "move fast and break things" approach is about as un-conservative as one can be.

it was meaning "to be careful and considerate when changing things", now it means "i do whatever i want and if you don't agree then you are (insert imaginary adversary here)"

American conservatives are economically liberal (or pretend to be), whereas American liberals are not economically liberal. In other words some of the American conservatives are pushing laisser-faire and Manchester School type economics, while the so called liberals are pushing intensive government regulation (which is not liberal.)

Many so called "conservatives" are economically liberal, whereas the so called "liberals" are pushing statism and social democrat ideas, which are not liberal. American definitions are arse backwards. American liberals were socially liberal at one point, but even that has begun to change.

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