Do you believe people are not aware of their differences in view point to the extent they will alway miss label themselves?
"Always"? I dunno. But Americans are sufficiently un-self-aware politically, for instance, that a substantial number of people on Social Security disability, welfare, and Medicare will show up at Tea Parties and complain about "big government moochers." The Republican Party can oppose, lockstep, a trillon-dollar deficit reduction package in both houses of Congress and still call themselves a party of fiscal sanity.
Or do "liberals" exhibit the same patterns in reverse?
Yeah, I think probably a large number of liberals consider themselves liberal, even though they oppose abortion, want smaller taxes on businesses and the rich, and believe in aggressive, interventionist foreign policy.
Do you believe people are not aware of their differences in view point to the extent they will alway miss label themselves?
Yes, I think hardly any Americans at all, actually, follow politics to the extent that they know what the commonly-used terms refer to. Americans change
religions more than they change political parties. Only
one in five self-reported "conservatives" actually hold consistent conservative positions. Americans
in general are saddled with an unfortunate ignorance about what words mean - fewer than one third of Americans can correctly identify DNA as the molecule of heredity, and only a microscopic fraction actually know what a molecule
is. One in five American adults believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Do I think that Americans in general don't understand what positions are liberal and which are conservative? Yes, absolutely. I don't see how that can be denied. Hardly
any conservatives are actually conservative, and almost every "liberal" in America is a center-right moderate. But liberal
positions - the social safety net, community investment and development, public-option health care, progressive taxation, strong protections for workers - are supported by resounding majorities of Americans, and always have been. Conservative
positions have relatively little popularity in Real America. Hence the curious paradox of conservative dream girl Sarah Palin having actually been one of Alaska's most liberal governors. Hence conservative Mitt Romney being the first governor to create universal health care in any American state.