Who are these people? These "liberals," these "conservatives"? How can you spot them? What does these labels mean? Rush Limbaugh uses the word "liberal" as though it were an insult. George Will is a "conservative" columnist. Are John Kerry and John Edwards "the most liberal" members of the Senate? Is such a thing quantifiable? Why are there "Christian conservatives" but not "Christian liberals"?

It's all about labels. Ask any philosopher or linguist. Labels exist to define what is, but also what is not. In history, we call it the phenomenon of The Other: the thing that is antithetical to us, that represents the values which are the opposites of our values. What is the East? What is the West? Simply put, we are the West. What we are not is the East. Those labels really don't do a good job of positively identifying all those traits that are the West and all those traits that are the East. As Potter Stewart might say, "I know the West when I see it." We define things in terms of how they relate to us. If we consider ourselves the West, then those people with whom we do not identify must be the East. At first glance, this looks like a simple geographical issue: obviously the people in the western part of the world are the West and the people in the eastern part of the world are the East. Look again: whose east and whose west? The Earth is a sphere, which makes absolute definitions of east and west impossible to define. Relative definitions, on the other hand, are easy to come by. The West might be defined as that part of the world west of the Prime Meridian but east of the International Date Line. The placement of these lines is purely arbitrary. The Prime Meridian extends through England because, well, England invented the Prime Meridian.

Even if we accept this man-made definition of east and west as they relate to cartography, does that mean that France -- which is east of the Prime Meridian -- is the East? Of course not; France is the West. How can we tell? If we were to list the reasons why France is a member of what we call the West, the only geographical reason would be that it's west of Russia. France is in the West because it shares a common religion with the West (Christianity), a common language (French, derived from Latin, the language of the Western Roman Empire), a common system of government (democracy), and a common cultural heritage. France is a charter member of the West, having helped build it over the course of hundreds of years since the fall of the Roman Empire.

What about that Roman Empire? That has something to do with it, too. The West is, roughly, the Western Roman Empire. The emperor Constantine founded a second capital of the empire, Constantinople (now Istanbul, as They Might Be Giants can tell you). The gigantic empire was divided in half geographically, but it was also divided culturally. In Rome, the Christians were closer to what we would call Catholic and spoke Latin. In Constantinople (not Istanbul), the Christians were closer to Eastern Orthodox and spoke Greek (because the people in that part of the world still spoke Greek). The cultural heritages of the two halves of the empire -- and the lands controlled by them -- have been different for over a thousand years. "East" and "West" refer explicitly to rough geographical divisions, both modern and historical, but they implicitly refer to a whole host of cultural, linguistic, and religious differences.

Now back to liberals and conservatives. They're words that act as shortcuts (aliases for Mac users) to other meanings. To label someone as "liberal" is to immediately introduce a whole host of assumptions about that person's beliefs, conveniently located under the umbrella of "liberal." The same goes for conservatives.

The word "liberal" means many things: "marked by generosity," "lacking moral restraint," "not literal or strict," "not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms." In discussing people marked as liberals in the United States, we would probably say that they are not traditional. They are open to new ideas and not bound by tradition. "Conservative" means "tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions" or "marked by moderation or caution." A conservative in the United States adheres to tradition. We could say that liberals are open to change while conservatives are not. "Conservative" and "liberal" describe two separate philosophical systems, one component of which is politics.

The liberal philosophical system

• Epistemology: Reason. Knowledge comes from human beings. "Inalienable rights" are innate in human beings, as a result of their being reasoning beings.
• Metaphysics: Subjective reality. Liberals don't believe that what is true for one person is true for another person.
• Ethics: Do things for the good of society as a whole. Liberals place more importance on society as a whole instead of individuals. Helping the less fortunate is also important. Liberals deal with people in groups rather than as individuals.
• Economics: Socialism. Liberals believe that an uneven distribution of wealth is not ethical, so another mechanism -- in this case, the state -- must allocate that wealth.
• Agency: Determinism. Liberals believe that things happen outside the control of human beings and that they have no control of what occurs in the world.

The conservative philosophical system

• Epistemology: God. "Inalienable rights" come from God, who created human beings and gave them the capacity to reason.
• Metaphysics: Objective reality. There is a knowable truth that is universal for all people (this truth, incidentally, is usually the same as the politician's truth).
• Ethics: Self-interest. A thing should be done by an individual for the good of that individual. Things done for the good of the individual will necessarily be done for the good of society (Adam Smith's "invisible hand").
• Economics: Capitalism. Conservatives believe that capitalism is the most just of all the economic systems. A person should work for what he earns and nothing less or more.
• Agency: Free will. There exists nothing outside the control of a human being's free will. There are no excuses because everything is the result of a person's good or bad choices.

Now an explanation, because I will be torn to pieces if I don't offer one. I added "agency" because I think that's an integral part of these philosophical systems. Conservatives and liberals have different views on who is responsible for things happening in the world. Conservatives, like existentialists, believe that everything can be reduced to choices. If you've got problems in your life, it's your own fault, because you made bad choices. Liberals, on the contrary, believe that you have no control over your actions. They are determined by your environment, by other people, and by your own genetic makeup. You have no control; you merely react to things that occur.

These descriptions would represent an ideal liberal or an ideal conservative. No human being could be like these ideals, but they are things that a conservative person or a liberal person strives for. Real people are a mixture of both, or of other systems, for these systems are not the only philosophical systems that exist.

These systems translate readily into the realm of politics. Democrats tend to be "liberal," while Republicans tend to be "conservative." Politics kind of messes up the reasoning behind things, because politics is about power. Is a liberal politician doing something because he feels his liberal philosophy will be best for the country, or is he doing something because he wants raw power? Sometimes it's hard to tell. Politicians -- allegedly -- do things for the good of the country. A conservative politician pushes for conservative policies because, in his opinion, those policies will be best for the country. Or is he pushing conservative policies because he feels they will give him more power? That's when these philosophical systems get intertwined with politics and it becomes hard to tell what "liberal" or "conservative" means. Some politicians that might be considered liberal favor conservative policies, and conservative politicians might favor liberal policies.

Conservatives are not bad people because they are conservative, nor are liberals evil because they are liberal. Neither one hates America. They represent opposing philosophical systems, nothing more. People from each side feel that theirs is the correct philosophy because ... well, because that's the way people are. When a person holds a belief, he naturally feels that his belief is correct. The problem occurs when these philosophies enter the realm of politics, when people are making decisions for America based not on an objective evaluation of the situation (i.e. "What is good for America?") but an ideological evaluation (i.e. "What do I think is good for America?"). This is where we run into the problem of conservative thinkers using their conservative ideology to make decisions and not their own minds. As Maslow would agree, a liberal person is not bad, but he can use that liberality to bad ends.

Politics today relies too much on ideology, and ideology is too inextricably linked to politics. Ideology is misused and confused with wisdom and is used to achieve power, not to make America better for everyone. A politician must think about serving his country, not improving his own station in life or the stations of his cronies. Conservatism is not the correct choice all the time; neither is liberalism the correct choice all the time. A politician much evaluate each situation as it occurs and not base every decision on a philosophy which, in the end, may not be good for all Americans.