My biggest pet peevy is that people in America don't actually know what the word liberal means. We use it in the wrong context, thanks FDR. It should mean a moderate libertarian someone who believes in both economic and social freedom with some restraints not what it has come to be in the United States.
The whole liberal-conservative thing is really stupid in my mind. It really strangles political debate in America when you can call everyone from myself to Rin-Chan a "conservative" and everyone from Al to Preston to jfern a "liberal". Unlike in Europe where each of those people would fall into a distinct catagory.
True, even the nolan chart (political compass) has serious limitations, but it's still a massive improvement over the shallow left-right nonsense left over from French revolutionaries. (which eventually came to divide the extremists from the ultra-extremists - revolution tends to eat it's own children). And what some people call 'conservative' these days doesn't even advocate conserving anything. So called neo-conservatism is really more of an unholy mating of maoism and capitalism/corperatism - with a sop to dispensationalist theocrats as an alliance of convienence).
