Labels & Definitions: A Few Words... on Words

I've given quite a bit of thought to our country's politics in recent years. Through substantial reflection, I came to feel that I had materialized a handful of well developed perspectives. I decided to take the next step by articulating my thoughts in writing for the public forum. In doing so, I realized a tricky communication barrier was in front of me. My thoughts in the forum of my own head were based on a vocabulary that was universal to the entire audience of my head: Me. However, I know that certain political labels are far from universal in the public forum -- most notably, the widely used terms of Conservative and Liberal.

For those who may not be aware, those two terms have actually completely reversed in definition over the past 200 years or so (really, research their historical definitions). And from what I can tell, the contemporary definitions are far from agreed. In my head, Conservative is most simply meant to refer to small government, while Liberal is relatively larger government. Although most would agree with that, I point to the contemporary label "social conservatism", which seems to vaguely refer to "traditional" and/or religious values. "Social conservatives" (it hurts me to even write the horribly mislabelled term) want such values to be intertwined with our government and administerd to the populous. However such activity is undeniably an increase in the size and scope of government. So in other words, "social conservatism" is in fact the opposite of small government Conservatism.

So back to my dilemma. Do I first take on the task of recalibrating the definitions of Conservative and Liberal, at the risk to that distracting and somewhat pointless debate? Or do I leave them behind and adopt replacement labels, despite my reluctance to add more label clutter to the political landscape? Considering the roller coaster history of the these two existing labels, I am opting leave them and their baggage behind, and instead adopt my own new labels for public use. Learning from the lesson of Conservative and Liberal causing their own definition problems by being somewhat vague and arbitrary labels, I have reflected on adopting more clear and self-defining labels for what I consider to be the two poles of government role:

Minimalism: A government which is small/minimal is size.

Interventionism: A government which seeks to play a more active role.

So, I bid farewell to Conservative and Liberal, and say hello to Minimalist and Interventionist!