What are your thoughts on being labeled "conservative" or "liberal?"

So long as someone opens their mouth and speaks, someone will try and attach some "label" to that speech. That said, people have leanings, and those leanings can generally be easily described in a word. So, the labels themselves really don't bother me all that much. With that in mind, however, I think that we can and do put too much emphasis on a label, and tend to make generalizations overall regarding a person, and regarding anything that that person may have to say. It stands to reason that conservatives can have liberal ideas about certain things, and so can liberals have conservative ideas. You really do have to evaluate each individual idea a person has on its own merits alone, rather than simply assume that if the person leans liberal, everything that the person believes must have an absolute liberal ideology behind it. Take the thought, for example, that I am a republican. I call myself a moderate conservative politically. However, I happen to support the legalization of marijuana which also happens to be a quite liberal idea. I am against globalization when there is an imbalance in trade, and when good paying, quality American jobs are jeopardized. That's a generally democratic idea, and is darn-right near being protectionist. Definitely not a totally conservative leaning on that particular issue. When you have the ability to look past the labels we assign to people, and evaluate each idea separately on their merits alone, we see more forest for the trees, and miss out on less that can be potentially good for us all in the end.