Unemployment, and so on

[FireIceTalon]

Yes?

I'm pretty sure he means that the rest of the world (1st world countries - do I have to clarify that?) don't place nearly the emphasis on abortion and gay rights issues as the US does. There are more important things to campaign on.

This is certainly true in Canada. The debates are pretty much settled here. Abortion is legal and on-demand, and same-sex marriages are the law at a federal level. Every now and then a conservative member of parliament tries to oppose one or the other, but the results have been a support of both, and have been for years.

In our last federal election, the ultra-conservative Christian Heritage Party (283% more conservative than our Conservative Party!) didn't even run on a platform that would outlaw abortion. They of course oppose it, but the only thing they said they would do would be to eliminate federal funding for abortions. The CHP is pretty much a joke and received a total of 18,910 votes out of almost 15 million ballots cast in our 2011 federal election. Our Conservative Party doesn't oppose abortion or same-sex marriages and received 5,835,270 votes and garnered a majority government.

The Conservative Party of Canada is more liberal than the Democrats in the US. In fact the only party we have in Canada that would be roughly analogous to the Republican Party is the CHP.

I talk too much about Canadian political parties.

Precisely what I meant

The terms conservative and liberal are difficult, because what may pass as conservative in one country, could be liberal in another or vice versa. Your conservative party in Canada would be considered fairly liberal here in the US, at least on those particular social issues. The US is generally, a very very conservative and/or center-right nation (much to my dismay) in comparison to most other first-world nations. Obama is labeled a socialist here by the extreme right, but he is much further to the right than a true socialist such as myself, or most of the Social Democrats in Europe (who are still a bit further to the right than I am, but certainly to the left of Obama). From my perspective, Obama is a centrist, and I'd guess most American democrats would be considered a conservative party in Western European nations, maybe Canada too (I don't know enough about Canadian politics to be certain)? Liberal is especially a difficult term because it has so many meanings. Conservatives tend to have liberal economic policies (neo-liberalism), but this doesn't make them liberals in the political context. I think a big problem in the US (and this may be true in Europe and Canada too, I have no idea) is semantics. Too many people throw terms and isms' around without knowing what they mean, so they become pejoratives or lose their meaning altogether.