liberal? conservative?

[stonefly]

I don't know much about international politics (or domestic). Does "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean the same thing in the UK, Canada, etc? Is it a name for a certain political group (party)? A description of the group's moral values/opinions/stance? A description of the group's stance on size or amount of government?

[NowhereMan]

there is a polotics board,
plenty of discussions there about Mr bush ,torog and ect ect.

[ermitonto]

I don't know much about international politics (or domestic). Does "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean the same thing in the UK, Canada, etc? Is it a name for a certain political group (party)? A description of the group's moral values/opinions/stance? A description of the group's stance on size or amount of government?

No, not in America. In America, a "liberal" is a Democrat, and a "conservative" is a Republican. Individual points on their agenda may differ sometimes but they don't really have any fundamental ideological differences. Sort of like in 1984, when the three governments of the world operated under the same ideology with different names and fiercely hated each other, just not as oppressively totalitarian yet.

But in layman's conversation, the terms are a bit different because most Americans like to see politics in black and white (hence the two-party model). If somebody calls you a liberal, they probably mean it as an insult, roughly equivalent to "you little pansy tree-hugging Christianity-hating pinko commie" and if you're called a conservative, that's pretty much shorthand for "you evil Bible-thumping, brown-people-bombing fascist Nazi".