Politics is treated like a football match these days. If you support one side, you can’t support the other. But what’s wrong with picking and choosing the best policies from each side as your political identity? Do you have to “choose” a party and then stick with them, even if there are things that attract you about another party?

I’m politically in the middle, though closer to the right than the left. An ideal government is lean and efficient, and does not interfere with the lives of its citizens any more than it has to. Citizens should be self-sufficient, and the private sector should always be developed ahead of the public sector. Charity is to be encouraged, but those who work should not have to bear the brunt of feeding those who don’t.

Does that sound like a good (albeit incomplete) description of conservatism? A smaller government and an emphasis on the individual? Well, it sounds great, but there’s another side to conservatism that doesn’t mesh with the above at all.

Why is conservative politics usually associated with harsh laws? Take the death penalty, which is usually associated with the right. How can a government be unobtrusive and passive while at the same time being able to kill people? Why were things like segregation, anti-suffragetism always the domain of the right, while the left took the side of the individual (which the right claims as its own)?

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense…which is why I don’t feel bad about mixing liberalism with conservatism. Sometimes, that’s the only way to go.