I think a lot of liberals see conservatives as authoritarian in that they support the police/military parts of government. Even your tea party libertarians tend to see the police/military as 'our people', culturally speaking and as a necessary part of the state philosophically speaking. Liberals tend to distrust police/military a lot more.
So while your libertarian is a lot less friendly to 'The State' and 'Big G Government', typically they're thinking about zoning boards, the FDA, FCC and welfare when they're against those things -- not particularly hierarchical organizations compared to military/police.
Basically, you're thinking economics, we're thinking marching orders.
(as a liberal, I find it ridiculous when I hear conservatives talk about the tyranny of big govt while pushing for an increase in defense spending and more militarization of police)
Regardless of arguing against caricatures of the 'other' side. I think a majority of Americans could agree on a majority of issues. The problem is the gamesmanship of politics.
Most conservatives do actually support more spending on military/security and less spending on everything else -- that's not a straw man position really, I was just describing a slant on it.
I'm curious where you get the idea that liberals distrust the police/military. I certainly haven't observed this trend. Liberals tend to favor disarming everyone except the police/military, for example, while conservatives want to retain the ability of their community/family to defend itself. Not just ability - liberals tend to be against self defense, neighborhood watch programs and similar things they perceive as "vigilantism", both politically and culturally.
As for the military, the last mainstream politician to eschew militarism was George "Humble Foreign Policy" Bush. (That lasted all of 9 months.)
I could agree with your characterization if you were talking about hippies in the 60's, and I'm well aware that many people still take that view of the world. But that's the world of 50 years ago.
Domestically, mainstream Democrats are also a little schizophrenic: they want to leave defense to the police, but they usually support restraints on police regarding profiling, due process, etc. (Those who join the police skew conservative, as authority and violence are intertwined; liberals know this instinctually, therefore feeling conflicted about depending on them.)
> Or am I misinterpreting something here?
Conservationism has historically been associated with a strong central government, under the belief that a selected group of suitable people are better at governing than the general population. The definition of "suitable" has changed throughout the years: typical examples are "King chosen by divine right" or "general with enough troops to seize the capital".
Liberals have emphasized the idea that the general population should have a loud voice in their own future. In an ideal liberal society, people lead their own lives according to their own desires, with decisions affecting the entire group made by group consensus. Authority figures would be temporarily elected by consensus to lead the group during times of danger, and would step down once things are back to normal.
Both extremes have been tried during various times in history, and there's a lot of evidence that we don't yet know how to make either one work. Purely conservative societies tend to degrade into dictatorships when the wrong leader comes to power, while purely liberal societies fall apart when they grow past the size of a small town.
Major modern nations are a compromise between both conditions. A liberal nation might have a leader with weaker powers elected by direct vote from every adult. A conservative nation might have a leader with strong powers, elected by successful businessmen or the aristocracy. Smaller societies tend to be more extreme than large ones, with successful examples of both totalitarianism and communism existing in small towns throughout the world.
Among liberals, one of the popular ideas is that everyone should have some basic quality of life. This can be accomplished either through government (e.g. taxing according to earnings and then distributing according to need) or non-government (e.g. church or charities) mechanisms. Strong liberals prefer the first because it can be more fair and efficient, whereas more moderate liberals prefer the latter because it gives the donor more choice over who receives help.
Personally, I lean more towards the liberal side because I feel there is significant evidence that when a program needs to cover a large majority (say 90+%) of the population, letting it be run by the government will make it more effective and less costly than letting it be run by a corporation.
http://thisishistorictimes.com/2009/04/all-the-better-to-hea...
Obama has pretty much pissed off most of the constituency that formerly called itself "liberal".
Joe Biden's reaction to the Patriot Act was simply to protest that Ashcroft just copied his 1996 bill.
Wiretapping and spying was a Democratic position under Clinton, and the virtuous Republicans opposed it. Wiretapping and spying was a Republican position under Bush and the virtuous Democrats opposed it. Do you honestly expect, though, that there wasn't spying under Bush Sr., who had been head of the CIA? And obviously wiretapping and spying was J. Edgar Hoover's position under a host of administrations of both parties.
Really, in recent times wiretapping and spying support/opposition in politicians seems to better track the power held by the politician than anything else.
American conservatives say that in the context of debates over federal engagement in certain types of government programs as a reason for opposing them there (which, incidentally, the same conservatives also oppose at the State level), but not about the kind of programs they support, like, say, national defense.
The areas that American conservatives make the biggest stinks about state power are identical to the ones where they make the biggest stink about the function not being a proper role of government at all.
> American liberals favor power in the federal government (i.e. centralization).
Er, no, American liberals don't. American liberals are often characterized as supporting centralization by American conservatives when they support the federal government doing things that American conservatives don't think government should do at all. (They are, surprisingly enough, not accused by American conservatives of "opposing centralization" when they oppose the federal government doing things American conservatives think it should do, e.g., spending more money than the rest of the world combined on national defense.)
Both American conservatives and American liberals tend to conduct multipronged efforts to get the same general policy preferences adopted at both state and federal levels (and tend to push all levers of power available, executive, legislative, and judicial -- and, at the state level, direct citizen initiative) at both levels.
In addition, American conservatives tend to accuse American liberals of centralization whenever they push a policy conservatives don't approve of at the federal level (particularly through legislative action), of seeking to "overturn the will of the people" whenever they seek to overturn a policy conservatives approve of through judicial action, of dictatorship whenever they seek to implement policy conservatives oppose executive action, and of infringing on the authority of the executive when they seek to implement a policy conservatives disapprove of through legislative action, at least, when the executive is in hands viewed as friendlier to conservatives.
Looks like it's too late to edit my post.
Some of this is explored by cognitive scientist/linguist George Lakoff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics)
I'm not buying the whole thing, but recent studies about one's affiliation correlating with various ways of viewing the world bear out some of Lakoff's thoughts.
It's funny you describe liberals as relying on authority and hierarchies - I'm reminded of a quote from Will Rogers "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." Ask liberals about this, and you'll get a bunch of laughs and nods… they even pride themselves on not exactly have the same point of view as each other, much less "leadership".
Liberals don't see the state as an authority, but rather, the community. After all, the people you are working with are literally neighbors, locals, friends. This also works with my own experience in dealing with getting state services for my children. The people we deal with come to the house, work with us, and are our equals. They form a community of people.
Admittedly, I'm culturally an extreme NY liberal, so I have little contact with this side of America. I've never been part of such a community, and could be totally wrong. If so, please tell me - I don't purport to have much first hand knowledge of such communities.
http://religions.pewforum.org/affiliations
I would also debate that many people calling themselves Protestant who go to mainline churches aren't really christian except in a cultural way. Unlike their Evangelical brothers, they have a tendency to not show up at church
Liberals do fuel a larger central government, but the narrative comes in the form of "we". Government is seen a vessel for popular will: "taking care of the homeless/planet/etc is our responsibility".
Conservatives are community-oriented, but tend to support authority as a valid context for community creation, from God and pastor in a church, to a security state to keep community safe, to the value of elders and traditions.
Libertarians, meanwhile, have a characteristically hard time unifying, being either out on the fringe, or split between the parties: the anti-war libertarians hold their nose and lean blue, and the anti-nanny-state libertarians hold their nose and lean red.
Very few people unilaterally reject any of the three survival strategies. It comes down to which is most prominent in the story you tell yourself about what a perfect world would be, and your role within it.
So, no.