(I'd rather see discussion of the original SDMI topic, but, hey, whatever.)

To most self-defined liberals that I know, the word "liberal" is more of an umbrella term for a lot of more specific beliefs that may or may not be held by other folks.

Some (stereo-) typically liberal positions:

- Big government isn't necessarily bad (or, there are desirable things in the world that the free market won't do by itself)

- Big business isn't necessarily good (Enron being the shining example of this)

- Laws and policies that have a disproportionate impact on "minority" communities should be viewed with skepticism (this includes "profiling", and all other sorts of crime including capital murder: convicted black murders are more likely to be executed than convicted white murders, and accused black murders are more likely to be convicted)

- Religion and sexuality are examples of "minority" communities, as above (which tends to drag in concepts like support for gay/lesbian/etc. rights, freedom from religion, and so forth)

- The environment matters (which comes back to the "big business isn't necessarily good" issue -- many businesses would happily pollute and pillage the environment in the pursuit of profit, mostly because they don't have to pay the costs of their behavior)

There are also a number of "liberal" policies that many "conservative" people would be likely to agree with.

- freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, etc. (even when that freedom means defending somebody else's right to say something that you find offensive, and it also includes things like the freedom to bear arms)

- privacy matters (there should be limits on what information people can track about you, and there should be mechanisms to punish people who violate your privacy -- this also includes opposition to things like spam)

My favorite dichotomy between modern American "conservative" and "liberal" positions, is that liberals seem to like government regulation of business, but they dont' like government regulation of personal behavior. In contrast, conservatives seem to object to government regulation of business, but love the idea of government regulation of personal behavior. It's all very amusing.

NOTE: I was very careful here to qualify my statements above. There's a big difference between saying "big government isn't necessarily bad" and saying "big government is always good."