Well I do think it ' s possible because I see it happen . I ' m a liberal with conservative friends , and while we disagree we can talk civilly without demonizing the others viewpoints as being racist and bigoted or communistic and PC . And I agree you ' re letting your bias cloud you ' re judgement , I think that ' s a somewhat distorted view of the liberal worldview . Of course ' liberal ' is a broad word that can cover anything from centerleft to anarchists , but in my experience your average liberalminded person has just as much interest in working for themselves and earning their keep as a conservative , they just tend to think that there should be safety nets in place . If I were to contrast the two in my mind , I ' d say that conservatives tend to think that a damaging situation should be dealt with by working to prevent the damage in the first place , while a liberal assumes that damage of some sort is inevitable and that focus should be given on damage control for after the fact .