"Conservative or Liberal?" "I can't answer that..."

"..., on what issue?"
"Well, humanist or Christian?
"It is a great thing to be a member of the Church of Both/And.""

Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires. 
We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism...."
            - The Future Pope Benedict

An interesting, if not exactly new essay linked by a Facebook friend.

In private life and public policy alike, there exists a particular category of truths that grown-ups and grown-up governments will respectfully acknowledge. For conservatives this amounts to mere common sense. Actions have consequences. Privileges entail responsibility. There is no free lunch. At day’s end, accounts must balance. Sooner or later, the piper will be paid. Only the foolhardy or the willfully reckless will attempt to evade these fundamental axioms.

Conservatives take human relationships seriously and know that they require nurturing. In community lies our best hope of enjoying a meaningful earthly existence. But community does not emerge spontaneously. Conservatives understand that the most basic community, the little platoon of family, is under unrelenting assault, from both left and right. Emphasizing autonomy, the forces of modernity are intent on supplanting the family with the hyper-empowered—if also alienated—individual, who exists to gratify appetite and ambition. With its insatiable hunger for profit, the market is intent on transforming the family into a cluster of consumers who just happen to live under the same roof. One more thing: conservatives don’t confuse intimacy with sex.....And they need to recognize that the political left includes people of goodwill.

                       --Andrew Bacevich

Although, I haste to add, I'm not with him on many of his specifics, and more importantly, on issues with which I believe I do concur with his positions, that I do not agree with some of his assessments of which ships have sailed, (eg, the government sanctioned private murder of the unborn.)  The reach of that thread upon which God has only to twitch is so much greater than the mind can imagine.