According to StudentNewsDaily.com, if you are a liberal and a Democrat, you believe government should have a big role in equal opportunity and equality for all. Government should also help to reduce all social ills, solve problems with services and address the needs of the poor.

As a conservative Republican, you like a smaller government. You believe in personal responsibility to solving problems. You want a strong national defense and place an emphasis on lower taxes.If you are not hard-core on either side, you can call yourself a moderate, in between the liberal left and the conservative right.So what label do you wear on your sleeve?I wonder why we can't just do away with this need to stereotype everyone into preset systems of beliefs.Take, for example, the topic of capital punishment. Liberals think the death penalty is inhumane, but so is murder, and if a liberal-thinking person's family member is brutally killed, would he oppose the murderer's execution?On the conservative side, look at the issue of abortion. Right-wingers believe birth should be the result of all pregnancies. So here's my problem. Conservatives believe individuals should be responsible to solve their own problems without government interference, and yet they want to impose government will upon women and require them to have full-term pregnancies.My mother used to say that liberal Democrats are for the poor and conservative Republicans are for the rich and the middle class has no one for them. Political debate often centers itself around the have-everythings, the have-somethings and the have-nothings.Conservatives argue that many people living off the benefits of a Democratic government are lazy and irresponsible. Liberals counterpoint this view and blame Republicans for ignoring those living in poverty to give tax breaks to large corporations run by ultra wealthy CEOs.Here's another thing I don't get. Call someone a liberal and it's as if you've called him an ethnic slur, yet call someone a conservative, he's, well, he's a conservative.While we often teach our children to be open-minded and to accept different viewpoints, they can see the hypocrisy in so many adults who stubbornly hold narrow-minded viewpoints about issues that significantly affect this country.The way I see it, political platforms have polarized our government from making progress that might benefit all Americans.Arguing morality makes no sense to me either. If a guy named Bob supports gay marriage, but his friend Jack tells Bob it's immoral because it's forbidden by the Bible, does Jack really think that Bob will go and read the Bible and change his opinion?What if I support gay marriage, read the Bible, am pro-choice, want a strong national defense, favor a minimum-wage increase to help the poor, and also want government to lower taxes?Then I can make up a new label. Call me a conserve-a-liberal.Why not? Why do we sit on either side of the fence? Preconceived labels lock us into think tanks so we can't form our own ideas that are unique to us.In 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson described society as a "joint-stock company" that intends to conform everyone to uniformed thought processes. Emerson believed that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and "whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."Great ideas have come from individuals who used their minds to think outside the box of liberal and conservative rhetoric. They trusted their own conceived thoughts rather than be brainwashed into an assembly line of political propaganda.Emerson said be yourself. Speak what you think even if it goes against what society thinks. You will risk having your ideas rejected because they will be misunderstood by society's puppets, who have their strings pulled by the powers of institutionalized truths.Emerson cites Socrates, Galileo, Newton and Jesus as individuals who dared to think differently. Today we embrace their ideas that were once misunderstood by their societies and threats to fixed sets of beliefs.Emerson said, "To be great is to be misunderstood."Block your ears from political agendas. Listen to the voice in your heart.Rich Strack can be reached at

katehep11@gmail.com.