I am really appreciating all the comments on this. Here is a quote I found that expresses some of my problems with classic liberalism, classic conservativism, classic revolutionary ideas, or classic anything:
"[It] encourages a closed...view of the world: one with a stop-time notion of history and a we-and-they approach to people, in which _we_ are possessed of truth, virtue, and goodness and _they_ of falsehood, depravity, and evil."

We-and-they has only led to sorrow and pain. The problem with both the right and the left ideologies in this country is that we are stuck with a nostalgic view of the world. For the conservatives, this nostalgia centers around a "traditional family values" idea that never existed. For the left, the nostalgia seems to work with an idea of a perfect Eden, which we [white colonialists] have degraded. Neither of these nostalgic visions ever existed. This is not to say that we shouldn't try and change things; rather, that what we should try to do is look at what we have NOW, and work with it, rather than attempt to reclaim a non-existent past.