Respectfully to Whipster, I think the argument you make is not converse to Dan's point. While we in American often equate liberal/conservative with political affiliation, this need not be the case. Taking Webster's definition of conservative as "One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs," take a look at what we call college: a liberal education, meaning, "education that enlarges and disciplines the mind and makes it master of its own powers."

I think the difference is this: in college people read about all the injustices in the world and have a passive interest in curing them all. Keyword passive. In college you learn about the past customs and behaviors. You pine for long-lost golden eras. You dream of new utopias. But you are doing it from within a traditional institution disconnected from real life. Once students reach the real world, they find out what really affects them and actively work to change (or at least complain about) those specific things. Change is what liberal means...to be liberal is simply to want change. To really, truly, want it and work for it. Maybe that is what the speaker meant. I wasn't there, but I prefer to think of it that way.

When Ted Kopell come to speak at my school, he talked about students going out and taking on the problems of the world. I hope he wasn't being "political" or anything. *ducks*