Reply #9: Exactly

[loyalsister]

They have distorted the language so that noone even knows what conservative means anymore.
Here's what has happened.
What you just described are conservative "principles."
The Republicans (I'm not going to call them conservatives here) have hijacked the word and labelled "ideological issues" as conservative even when they run counter to conservative "principles."
For example- the Pledge of Allegience. They passed a state law here to force schools to say it every week. If a person voted against that bill in the name of "local control", it was a "conservative" vote. However, it was totally hijacked and the "conservatives" (otherwise known as radical right wingers) labelled it as a conservative issue and anyone who voted against was a radical leftist.
I think that most people like to consider themselves "conservative." So, it could be constructed that "conservative" is the middle. Then moveing left and right you go from conservative as a description of the position to radical.

radlft liblft conleft <con> conrt librt radrt

Reclaiming language would help us immensly in this and future elections as well as any other political action.