Fascinating email I just received

Seriously, it was quite interesting. Here goes:

I doubt you'll have any more time/inclination to help me than any of the other political activist voices I've contacted recently, but I thought I'd give this one more try before giving up on the whole prospect of attempting to understand politics and just pick a party line to rubber-stamp every four years like my parents always did.

What, exactly, does it mean to call oneself a "Liberal" or a "Conservative"? I've been reading dozens of blogs and politically-oriented websites, as well as sampling talk radio and politically-oriented cable TV offerings from both sides of the "debate" (to use that term very loosely), and I have tentatively arrived at the following conclusions:

1) If you spend virtually every waking moment studying everything your political opponents do or say and analyzing it for things you can say are stupid, but never under any circumstances say anything meaningful about what you believe in or support, then you're a Conservative.

2) On the other hand, if you spend virtually every waking moment studying everything your political opponents do or say and analyzing it for things you can say are dishonest, but never under any circumstances say anything meaningful about what you believe in or support, then you're a Liberal.

I don't mean to sound flippant here, but that really is the total semantic content of virtually every commentary I have run across so far. I would really appreciate it if you could take the time to help me out, although based on my experiences thus far I've come to expect that isn't likely to happen.

And for the record, I did answer, though I told him that it was a damn good question and one liberals were try to answer themselves nowadays. I especially liked his analysis of the way conservatives and liberals look at each other - basically we think they're evil, they think we're inept. :-)

So, answer his question - what is a liberal? And what is a conservative? One thing I didn't say in my email response, because I forgot, is that conservatism stands for a strong military, lower taxes and limited government, but it doesn't REALLY. They just say that. I think conservatives would be just as hard pressed to give an honest answer as to what they stand for IN PRACTICE.