When the Conservatives are even a teensy-weensy bit conservative, they are characterized by their opponents as being extreme-right. You never hear their opponents say, "well, that's a bit right-wing", or "that's moderately right wing", or even just, "that's right-wing" -- it's always far-right, extreme-right, and far-right extremists (and, if you really want to insult, it's "far-right extremists with ties to ultra-far-right Americans).
Yet, when the Liberals propose something proposterous like same-sex marriage, or same-sex adoption rights, no one uses the terms extreme-left or hard-left to describe their position.
Why is this?
Here's one reason: the Liberals wait for the leftist courts they appoint to first give them political cover, so that, no matter how far left or outlandish the current issue on the table is, it has some semblence of legitimacy simply because the courts are in the process of considering it, or the courts have come down and declared it as a right. (Swinging is a good recent example of this.)
The fact is (even I'm beginning to sound like Paul Martin), the Liberal Party is a hard-left Party of social extremists. What else can you call a Party that supports same-sex marriage, thinks state-funded institutional daycare is a wonderful thing, is against property rights, and is soft on prostitution, euthanasia, and drugs?
I think in fairness to the other side, perhaps the reason their positions are not characterized as extreme-left is this: there are no extreme left positions left to take -- we're already there. We are already so close to the far-left edge of leftdom, that there is no longer an exteme left position to stake out.
Short, of course, of outright government confiscation of citizens' wealth and property. But, after the Russian experience, I don't think that even Jack Layton-Lenin would want to go there.
They need the capitalist bull to feed the socialist pig.
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