I would argue that welfare is a good thing that has been distorted and exploited by a few bad seeds. Would you still feel the same way if the type of people that you (legitimately) rail about in your post were removed from the equation? That is, if welfare were given to only the people that cannot work? I understand your point and agree with it, but I think that your apparent conclusion that welfare be abolished is much too strong. Certainly, these people that you discuss are in the wrong, yet working within the law, but, IMO, it is still the job of the government to protect its citizens, and I think that many (most? I don't have any statistics) in the welfare program are deserving of that protection.

I take the other stance with you as far as abortion is concerned. (BTW, my wife was also adopted and agrees with me on this issue.) I have come to the conclusion that there is no way to reconcile our differences, and it would be an issue where we'd all have to agree to disagree, if it didn't have significant real-world consequences. I tend to agree with you on a personal basis (I would at least like to believe that I would not abort a pregnancy, but, then, I'm not a woman), but I have a hard time saying that someone else shouldn't do it. I would probably tend to look down on a person who aborted a pregancy simply due to inconvenience, but medical concerns, I believe, are legitimate, as much as I wish that they never were. I'm very middle-of-the-road on this issue, I think.

I would just like to point out, again, that liberalism and conservatism do not have to define you as a person. It is easily possible to be very conservative on certain issues and very liberal on others. For example, I'm very conservative on a personal level, but very liberal on a political level. That is, I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but that benefit wears off pretty quickly once I start dealing with a person directly. (This fits the earlier statement that liberals tend to think of people as inherently good, which, I think, is kind of another way of looking at my earlier pseudo-definition.)