When asked whether I am a conservative or a liberal, I am at a loss as to how to respond. A decade ago I would have eagerly called myself a conservative, and while I have since been heavily influenced by such "liberal" thinkers as Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, and Herbert Marcuse, my political and moral views haven't moved much on the spectrum. My thinking has been formed just as much by Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, and J.R.R. Tolkien (not to mention Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas).
Aside from having my own strange concoction of philosophical influences that seems to place me outside the conservative/liberal binary (I'm no synthesis of them, which is impossible), the meaning of the two terms has changed in the past decade, especially the meaning of conservative. Many conservatives today define themselves in terms of a particular position on concrete issues (Iraq War, Illegal immigration, Judicial appointments, etc.); whereas being conservative used to mean working to conserve the permanent things in an ever changing world. Conservatives generally held to the same principles, but they could disagree on how those principles were applied in concrete situations. Today their principles are vaguely defined, and their stance on the issues is what defines them. I speak generally here.
I find myself at home neither on the Left nor the Right, neither under the banner of conservatism nor of liberalism. Such terms, of course, have their inherent limitations, but these days I'm not even sure what they mean.
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