Where are you on the Nolan political spectrum?

[The Grand Nudger]

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Liberal and conservative aren't part of our nature or any nature.  They're a hasty imposition of ambiguous political claims and shifting mores.

I think they are both.

In my OP was trying to distinguish the political terms of conservative or liberal (perhaps I should've said progressive) from the literal meanings.

Conservative literally means resistant to change.  That is part of our nature, and NOT a political affiliation.  People get more conservative as they get older.  Young people have less roots in the way things used to be, and are more willing to find their own path.  Political parties know this and try to exploit it (and brand it).

-and yet, conservatism has been an agent of radical change.  

People don't get more conservative as they get older, I used to wonder about that one thinking it true, myself.  More accurately, whatever you are, today, will be conservative in 30 years.  We define it, and it moves, as we go along. The elderly conservatism of any given moment is the sum total of the political convictions of the surviving cohort. The conservatives of today still believe the same things they did in the 60's, 70's, and 80's - when they were politically subversive with respect to their conservative parents. Parents who would not recognize the conservatism of today.

But, on any particular issue, I was trying to say that I may be conservative -- i.e. resistant to change.  You believe in giving a guaranteed income to everyone?  Prove that isn't going to bankrupt the nation.  You want to change the government representation to be equal to proportional vote?  Prove to me that won't lead to wackadoodle parties getting the balance of power.

I am getting older, and I'm less likely to buy into someone's utopian bullshit (even if I'm wrong).  I like the devil I know, even with its flaws.  That is part of our nature, and it should be part of our nature.  That's being conservative. 

-right there, the devil you know.  

I also have my own progressive utopian ideas that I hope other people will treat with the same degree of skepticism.  This is how good change happens, with skeptical thought and tension between our conservative and progressive nature, hopefully moving in the right (or is that left?) direction.

We don't have any such nature.......

You may be conservative, but that's you, own it.  You like some set of ideas you call conservative. Nature didn't do that to you.  No more so than it made me a whackadoodle. Just imagine, my whackadoodlism is going to be conservative™ one day too. You'll be adrift in sea of whackadoodles like me, voting for the politician that yammers away about our traditional values - none of which seem relatable to you. Politics are the very definition of artifice. Even more fundamentally, no one wants to throw away things that work. That's not a genuine point of difference between conservation and progress as naked terms - and even less so in their political context. It's always been (and never been more than) a talking point that one side or the other used as a cudgel.

Consider the irony in waxing on about skepticism as you launch yourself into rote expression of jingoism, justifying your position by means of thematically misinterpreted data. For fun, for a laugh, for a giggle, I mean. I do get what you're trying to say, but at the same time the manner that you've expressed it explicitly declares a bias that is not - but probably feels like - skepticism. It's just an issue of framing. For example, a 2-axis graph is good at juxtaposing two values considered for purposes of the grid as diametrically opposed. Personal freedom and economic freedom, in this case. You seem to have at least some thought as to how these two wind themselves into each other, assuming that there a seperate thing - and there's the rub. If they're the same thing, a graph that assumes diametric opposition will get it wrong as a matter of it's function. What does it mean to say that a person should (or should not) have the freedom to fail, when we insist that they should have any personal freedom? What personal freedom could we possibly be referring to? The freedom to think about all of the things you are not free to do? Lets not worry too much about the answer to that, so that we can wonder something else. Does simply framing the two as opposite sides of a diagram set up a cognitive trap? Does it make us believe that there's some conflict between the two when there isn't, and what effects would that have on your ideas of other peoples utopias and what you expect them to show you? Are you sure that the criteria are coherent in their own respects?

If I say to you I think that we should live in a country where any person who wants food should have food - will you then insist that I show you that it won't bankrupt us? It won't, we already spend more money, but assume that it would bankrupt us. Do we let people starve because it's more costly to feed them? That's unlikely to be your takeaway, conservative or progressive. So why do we say things like that?