A Misnomer

I hope you took the opportunity to watch today's short feature in the Afternoon Matinee. It illustrated how, in some parts of the world, standing up to protect the environment can be a dangerous avocation. It doesn't happen only over there either. It seems that in many places in the western world it can be just as dangerous to advocate for the planet or the least of the world's human population.

In most such situations, the labels employed boggle my mind. The people who fight for conservation of the earth's bounty and/or financial resources to be utilized to end poverty are labeled the liberals. On the other hand, the people who want to continue to extract natural resources at an unsustainable rate or who want to allocate financial resources for endless war are called the conservatives.

I don't know about you, but this seems backwards. If words have well-defined and accepted meanings, wouldn't those of us who desire to conserve the planet's resources be the conservatives, while those who have no interest in such conservation be the liberals? Wouldn't those of us who want to conserve human life by opposing endless war be the conservatives, while those who view much of human life as expendable in the pursuit of greater corporate profits be the liberals?

I wish someone would explain to me how these two terms -- conservative and liberal -- have gone topsy-turvy.