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I'm someone who actually calls myself socially liberal but fiscally conservative, and that's because my primary concern (in the terms of moral foundations theory) is the liberty/oppression axis. In other words, I think leaving people alone is a good thing, and while it's not the only good thing and it needs to be balanced against other concerns, we should still be doing it more than we are now.
Two caveats:
I'm socially liberal because a free society requires tolerating even the people you hate. This is hard, and even many people who consider themselves tolerant because they simply don't hate a particular group aren't (and often don't want to be) tolerant in this sense.
I'm economically conservative because the freedom to act without government interference even in an economic context has great inherent worth (but I'll repeat here that I don't value it to the exclusion of all else) but also because the free market usually does a better job than central planning at making everyone prosperous. I don't care much about wealth inequality - a world in which I have two dollars and you have two million dollars is a better place than a world in which we both have just one dollar.
Edit: in practice I always end up voting for moderate Democrats at the national level, both because I think social issues are generally more important than economic issues and because neither party usually does what I would want regarding economic issues. However, I have more options at the state and local level.
How do you feel about anarchism and/or libertarian communism? (just trying to see how much you think that way because of a sympathy for capital or because of a rejection of the state)
As someone who shares the views of the parent comment, I think anarchism is the end-road, utopia progression of these beliefs.
I think that conservatives are right to be skeptical of big government. Concentrated power always corrupts without fail. Whether that’s big government, big corporations, big religions, that remains true.
I think some pragmatism is required especially for things such as emergency services and common defense because market forces are kind of like Darwin’s evolution. It selects for the best chance of making the number go up and doesn’t specifically select the best outcome for all participants.
Bonus Analysis: (own section because my post was getting too long)
Republicans, in my analysis, however aren’t really that concerned about big government. The Republican Party is a big organization that has been corrupted, they are more concerned about feigning concern to further their own wealth and power. And thus the turn toward fascism.
We used to have a better standard of living. We used to have less depression. We used to have more membership in civic organizations and churches. Our country used to be far more distributed and decentralized than it is today.
It’s not surprising to me that all of those factors decreased and hate and division increased while power and wealth has became more and more concentrated the last 30 years.
I agree with you on most points, thanks for your analysis/opinion!
It's very interesting, I rarely see someone with whom I absolutely disagree with everything they just said, and whom I think their belief system will actually make all society worse and not better. But to put a clear example. It seems to me that you beliefs on the first caveat, are logically incompatible with the second. Your belief on the second caveat is antagonistic with your stated desires. A lack of government, or low scale of a government, without central planning, with a free market, with low restrictions and tons on inequality, is the prime condition that creates and fosters hate and intolerance. I read your comment and can't help but to interpret it as “I hate poor people, and you should tolerate my hate because I'm very articulate when I express it”.
How do you define a free market? Why do dollars have value?