The problem that I see with defining conservative or liberal is that the resolution can not be high enough and is, therefore, mostly useless. I suppose there is the perception that once you decide which camp you belong to then you don’t have to consider issues on an individual basis.
At the level of a particular issue you may be able to classify someone’s position as either conservative or liberal. As soon as you try to extrapolate that classification to include more than one issue it becomes less and less meaningful.
It is a forced dilution of your opinion set.
We should be doing away with the labels and dealing with the issues as they arise. The idea of left or right as a position leads directly to group think and corruption. I think a much more productive question would be why do we need anyone in between us and the decisions? What laudable purpose does the party system serve?