One issue I'm afraid I constantly see in debates about "liberal" or "conservative" is that a lot of Americans seem to assume that it ultimately comes down to supporting democrats or republicans, thus, policies which are actually not necessarily liberal such as positive discrimination tend to get lumped into the "liberal" camp, likewise belief in unrestricted free trade ala Ayne rand tends to be thought of as conservative.
As I've said before, there used to be a wonderful site called the political index. It noted that the spectrum of left/right did not encompass all beliefs about society, since say someone like Stalen, a left wing authoritarian is actually miles away from karl Marx, a left wing libertarian, just as Ayne rand a right wing libertarian, is a long way from Adolf Hitler, a right wing authoritarian.
Instead, it proposed a graph, with left and right across the bottom, and authoritarian/libetarian up the middle.
I will admit myself I'm a left wing libertarian, or at least moderate libertarian, but this in turn doesn't necessarily mean I'm a democrat either, or indeed would be if I lived in the states.
Actually I'll confess that the adversarial nature of us politics was something that very much put me off, with both sides essentially forming cliques, and thus assumptions in any debate always made about the other side's views simply based upon the fact that they were! the other side, heck my parents in law's political spectrum basically ran democrats equals abortion equals bad, republicans equals christian equals good, and had little else in terms of views aside from that.
Likewise, what I saw of most of Us news seemed to be more bent to depicting one or other political tribe in a bad light than either reporting the facts or debating issues with any degree of clarity.
As a disclaimer I will say that British politics has its own share of pretty major issues too, not the smallest being the government's habbit of getting more taken up with the constant cricket match of inter party politics to the point that the political situation is so utterly divorced from reality it has nothing to do with what is actually going on with the country, hence why labour, the so called "left wing" party go and privatise most British services, and only later discover that that was an amazingly bad idea .
Either way, myself I always take views that talk about "the liberals" or "the conservatives" or "the left" with a huge great spoon of salt, since in the end, people have different opinions on different issues, even those under the banner of the same political ideology, and however much people like my in laws would like to see politics and society in terms of a simple battle of the good and righteous republicans against the evil democrats, ----- or in fairness often the other way around, matters are rarely that simple.
Hell, despite being a card carrying Marxist myself, I've seen plenty of so called "liberals" whom I certainly do not! agree with at all .
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)