"There is definitely a language problem to deal with. There is so much cultural baggage and emotion associated with the terms liberal and conservative that the words no longer have precise meaning. It's best to look at the situation using terms from another culture. One sufficiently alien that cognitive biases are forced into consciousness and automatic responses are suppressed. I like Taoism because it is confusing to the Western mind."

Good point about language problem.

I guess we could talk about ideas in more simplistic terms but on the ground people are complex and may cross boundaries. In fact I'm sure many do.

I suppose we could say if we must simplify it and put people in categories, it is those who values individualism and self sufficiency within the framework of fair social structure. People who understand that with "rights" and privileges there should come merit, hard work, responsibility etc.

And those that don't like the concept of liberty that has duties attach to it, they simply want privileges with no responsibility. And they are willing to give up a lot for someone to take care of them. These are best friends of the big goverment, wealth-fare state, socialists etc.

I guess the way to sum it up would be social responsibility types (conservatives) vs social justice types (ideologues).

“The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.” ― Russell Kirk

“In American popular usage today, 'liberalism' means left-liberalism – not to be confused with 'neoliberalism' ... and is expressly contrasted with 'conservatism'. In this usage a liberal is one who leans consciously towards the underprivileged, supports the interests of minorities and socially excluded groups, believes in the use of state power to achieve social justice, and in all probability shares the egalitarian and secular values of the nineteenth century socialists.” ― Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

There is also the third group that we might mention, the globalist, the big business types, what some people call, some of the time as neoliberals. Google in this example.

Someone wrote about that in this way: The neoliberal offensive

As alluded to in earlier chapters, one of the most prominent misrepresentations of liberalism has been the introduction of the term ‘neoliberalism’. In this case an ideological variant dons the mantle of a rival in order to clothe itself in rhetorical respectability and even to wrest ground, deliberately or unwittingly, away from established liberal versions. Neoliberals tend to see the world as an immense and potentially unencumbered global market, in which the exchange of goods for profit overrides other aspects of cross-national relations. Individual understandings of neoliberalism will of course differ. But in general terms, being a liberal is understood by neoliberals to characterize the free individual agent, alone or in conjunction with others, as being above all economically assertive. The defining features of that assertiveness are to maintain and develop the economic power inherent in capitalist production and transactions, to open up new areas for investment, and to benefit from the plethora of goods available for consumption. Neoliberals subordinate social, political, and cultural spheres to a professed self-regulating economic market and their principles are supposed to inspire the ways all social activities are run.

In terms of liberal morphology, neoliberals confine the core liberal concept of rationality to maximizing economic advantage. They do away with any idea of natural sociability and minimize mention of human individuality as the end of social progress. State power is mainly marshalled to guaranteeing trade and commerce, not to creating the conditions for human flourishing and well-being. Instead the unfettered power of the market is unleashed, so that the liberal concept of constrained and accountable power is circumvented. It is retained mainly to protect entrepreneurs in going about their business, while sidestepping the aim of a genuinely free market that could unlock the economic energy and inventiveness held to be intrinsic to all individuals. In its most recent forms, neoliberalism champions a world in which huge multinational corporations and mega-banks increasingly control and dictate the way we live, fostering an imposed and conformist managerialism. Instead of regarding economic intercourse as a means to the furthering of political ends such as peace and international solidarity, it sees political institutions as a framework arrangement for securing the efficiency and financial prosperity of the private sector. Liberal universalism has been replaced with neoliberal globalism; the ethical permeation of individuals has been supplanted by the economic ingestion of territory. Even governments themselves are predominantly recast as investors and facilitators of trade, rather than deliverers of welfare or social justice. Only when financial crises erupt do governments make efforts to regulate the world of banking, but that is done with a relatively light touch.

In promoting the notion of a self-regulating market, neoliberals approach conservative terrain. One of conservatism’s key features is a belief in the extra-human origins of the social order, reflecting sets of rules that derive from the divine, the historical, the economic, or the ‘natural’. Neoliberals provide a self-assured economic version of the naturally balanced system. In that version, attempts to direct and coordinate human effort can trigger catastrophic intervention when ‘natural’ economic rules are flouted. Hayek’s inspiration is evident on this point. In terms of liberalism’s layers, neoliberalism has been decoupled from its closest antecedent, layer two market liberalism, which nourished a moral vision of markets as a part of a civilizing endeavour, emphasizing individual talent not corporate power. There are few vestiges of an ethical mission towards a fair society among neoliberals—instead, levels of social inequality have been rising under neoliberal policies. And there is little commitment to engaging the engines of progress in the quest for human self-improvement. The welfare-state role of layer four is whittled away or handed over to private organizations. The constitutional arrangements of layer one, with their safeguarding of individual space and liberation from tyranny, are retained but effectively redirected towards free competition among powerful and vastly unequal economic players. In sum, neoliberals do not possess the minimum kit to be located squarely at the heart of 21st century liberalism. Put more forcefully, the complex morphology of liberalism is shattered and becomes barely recognizable.

Liberalism A Very Short Introduction by Michael Freeden, 2015

"From the Taoist perspective what the West is experiencing is an excess of the Yin. "

Yes, that is a good point. In Hinduism this would be explain in yet another mythological way, but still would touch on the same point, of losing balance.

I suppose we are in Kali Yuga

The Kali Yuga, in Hinduism, is the fourth of the four yugas in a Yuga Cycle described as the worst and believed to be the present age, full of conflict and sin. Kali Yuga is preceded by Dvapara Yuga of the current cycle and followed by Satya Yuga of the next cycle.

Hindus believe that human civilization degenerates spiritually during the Kali Yuga.

Hinduism often symbolically represents morality (dharma) as an Indian bull. In Satya Yuga, the first stage of development, the bull has four legs, which is reduced by one in each age that follows. By the age of Kali, morality is reduced to only a quarter of that of the golden age, so that the bull of Dharma has only one leg.

"From the Taoist perspective what the West is experiencing is an excess of the Yin. A failure to systemitize according to the Yang or the autistic like male predilection. For our purposes consider liberal predilections as Yin and conservative predilections as Yang. The beauty of this way of looking at the world is it doesn't carry with it the moralizing baggage of Western thought. The Yin and the Yang just are, neither superior to the other."

Some people from western and even eastern perspective described this as a "Masculine" and "Feminine": Concepts or Stereotypes of Masculine being assertive, powerful, taking initiative, and Feminine as carrying and passive.

Using those concepts as a base starting point in China Taoism was described as Feminine and Confucianism as Masculine. Confucianism eventually took over. In India both the westerners and the natives described India during colonial times as Feminine and British and west in general as Masculine. Today we might look at west as Feminine and Russia and China as Masculine.

"It gets confusing because we Westerners associate caring with moral virtue. From the Taoist perspective caring is neither good nor bad. What is important is social harmony. Harmony that can only be achieved when the Yin and the Yang are in balance. Caring combined with order as it applies here. Neither the smothering mother nor the emotionally absent father. Too much control or too little caring."

This is probably oversimplified, because caring as a moral virtues was seen as caring in a particular context. You did not show it to your enemies because it would be weak and taken advantage off.... it was not until the pathological "empathy" which is something else that we see now tithe lefty snowflakes. These fruitcakes have no real concept of empathy, because they surly don't care about homeless and other problems in their own cities, but some far away imaginary third wold country, where they don't have to do anything about, but can use it as a way to rationalize their march to their utopia.

The Orgiastic Nature of Pathological "Empathy" (THE SAAD TRUTH_1259)

"From a biological perspective what you have to understand is that caring in part arises out of the neurotic impulse and the empathy that comes from mirror neurons. By nature it divides the world into infants to be cared for and predators to be destroyed. It's not a rational but rather instinctual process. It goes against traditional morality in which love is abstract. "

Empathy is there for specific biological purpose, starting with the bond between mother and a child and father and a child. As you put it, mothers took care the infants and fathers go out to kill enemies of the infants to ensure infants grow so they can protect themselves or contribute to society that protect each other.

As I've mention in the previous post I would not call regressive snowflakes and other fruitcakes empathetic, I would call them neurotic at best, psychotic is more likely.

Empathy can have many synonyms, so the best simple explication I heard in the context of something like Jude-Christian framework would be...

Sympathy – feeling sorry for another’s hurt.
Empathy – walking in another’s shoes.
Compassion – love in action.

"In Christianity love is not an emotion but an obligation that extends to the predator. It's very Eastern in this way. Judgment being beyond human capacity. Just as the Yin and Yang describe harmony not good and evil the Christian ethos is towards internal harmony with the good and it's manifestation in the world a secondary consequence. "

Good observation.

Although I would imagine that for Christians the balance happens in the after life, when people are judged by cosmic justice.

In Hinduism and Buddhism in particular, Karma and reincarnation take this function. Not sure about Daoism/Taoism. I'm not as familiar with its theology.

"The idea of reincarnation did not originate with Buddhism and had existed in India for several centuries before the Buddha’s time. The belief is common to many cultures and was widespread in the classical West before coming to be seen as incompatible with Christian doctrine around the 6th century. Indian conceptions about rebirth are distinctive, however, because of their association with the doctrine of karma, which holds that the circumstances of future rebirths are determined by the moral deeds a person performs in this life. Karma (Pali: kamma) is of fundamental importance to Buddhist thought, and to understand it we must explore a cluster of related concepts concerning cosmology and time.

karma functions as the elevator that takes people from one floor of the building to another. Good deeds result in an upward movement and bad deeds in a downward one. Karma is not a system of rewards and punishments meted out by God but a kind of natural law akin to the law of gravity. Individuals are thus the sole authors of their good and bad fortune. In popular usage karma is thought of simply as the good and bad things that happen to people, a little like good and bad luck. The literal meaning of the Sanskrit word karma is ‘action’, but karma as a religious concept is concerned not with just any actions but with actions of a particular kind. Karmic actions are moral actions, and the Buddha defined karma by reference to moral choices and the acts consequent upon them. He stated ‘It is choice (cetanā), O monks, that I call karma; having chosen one acts through body, speech, or mind’ (A.iii.415).

Moral actions are unlike other actions in that they have both transitive and intransitive effects. The transitive effect is seen in the direct impact moral actions have on others; for example, when we kill or steal, someone is deprived of his life or property. The intransitive effect is seen in the way moral actions affect the agent. According to Buddhism, human beings have free will, and in the exercise of free will they engage in self-determination. In a very real sense individuals create themselves through their moral choices. By freely and repeatedly choosing certain sorts of things, an individual shapes his character, and through his character his future. As the proverb has it: ‘Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.’

Not all the consequences of what a person does are experienced in the lifetime in which the deeds are performed. Karma that has been accumulated but not yet experienced is carried forward to the next life, or even many lifetimes ahead. Buddhists disagree on exactly how this happens, but one possibility is that the performance of good deeds is like charging up a battery with karmic energy, which is then stored until a future time. Certain key aspects of a person’s next rebirth are thought of as karmically determined. These include the family into which one is born, one’s social status, physical appearance, and of course, one’s character and personality, since these are simply carried over from the previous life.

Some Buddhists adopt a fatalistic perspective and see every piece of good and bad luck as due to some karmic cause. The doctrine of karma, however, does not claim that everything that happens to a person is karmically determined. Many of the things that happen in life—like catching a cold—may be entirely due to natural causes. Karma does not determine precisely what will happen or how anyone will react to what happens. Individuals are free to resist previous conditioning and establish new patterns of behaviour that will short-circuit the endless cycle of rebirth.

So is the goal of Buddhism to be reborn in a more fortunate condition? Although in practice many Buddhists—both monks and laymen—fervently desire this, it is not the final solution to suffering that Buddhism seeks. The Buddha was dissatisfied with the temporary bliss he attained through the trances taught to him by his teachers, and the sublime existence enjoyed by the gods is but a prolongation of this experience. Sooner or later the good karma that results in a heavenly birth will run its course and even the gods will die and be reborn. Karmic energy is finite and eventually expires, not unlike that of a spacecraft in a decaying orbit.

The answer to the problem of suffering does not lie in a better rebirth in the cycle of reincarnation (saṃsāra)—only nirvana offers a final solution."

• Buddhism - A Very Short Introduction (2nd edition) By Damien Keown 2013

Possible. Although with Australia lockdowns maybe the Sky News mentioned something globalist did not like.