In response to my previous entries on Roget’s New Millennium Thesaurus, a reader suggested checking out Roget’s synonyms for liberal. There are three different entries; here are the the highlights:

advanced, altruistic, avant-garde, beneficent, benevolent, bighearted, bounteous, bountiful, broad-minded, charitable, enlightened, exuberant, flexible, free, generous, good Joe, handsome, high-minded, humanistic, humanitarian, impartial, intelligent, interested, kind, left, lenient, magnanimous, open-hearted, philanthropic, rational, reasonable, Santa Claus, tolerant, unbiased, unbigoted, understanding, unprejudiced

Compare that verbal fellatio with this, from the word conservative:

bitter-ender, fearful, fogyish, fossil, fuddy-duddy, inflexible, obstructionist, old fogy, reactionary, red-neck, stick-in-the-mud, timid, uncreative, undaring, unimaginative, white bread

Obviously, the terms liberal and conservative have meanings beyond the political. Still, from the inclusion of the word left in the liberal entry, we can tell that politics was at least considered by the editor when compiling these entries.

So, go back and read each entry—liberal and conservative—and tell me whether you detect some sort of value judgment there. If you didn’t know what the words meant, how would these Roget’s entries mold your perception of each word?