Every action has unintended consequences - it's when they become too extreme or change is to rapid or poorly thought out that there is a problem. Liberals are not alone in the realm of "unintended consequences" (Iraq being one good example).
Massive (and wasteful) military spending and corporate subsidies are very much conservative.
You have a uni-dimensional view of liberalism and conservatism. Spending and the size of government alone aren't the only benchmarks of "conservative" and "liberal". Bush is most definately not a liberal.
We have been over this - but you never convinced me that Liberalism alone can be authoratarian and that is primarily becuase you have a very limited definition of conservative that doesn't apply in practice. I gave plenty of examples of authoritarian right-wing regimes. Authoritarianism is the extreme of both ideologies - in practice. I still stand by that argument. And I still don't see how your definition of conservative differs from libertarian.
Truth:
Conservatism is about caution - conserving the status quo and a people's culture and tradition.
Liberalism is about expanding the status quo through change.
There is good and bad to both: Liberalism provides the push for necessary changes - not necessarily change for changes sake; Conservatism puts on the breaks - for precisely the reason's you have given. However - without the liberal push to become more inclusive through change - we would indeed be stuck forever in a status quo of such things as slavery, sweatshops and no right to vote for women. Without the conservative tendancy to put on the breaks we could lose our culture, values and history in a society of "anything goes" hedonism and ever changing rules.
Eventually - what was liberal becomes the new status quo.
Liberalism and Conservatism is relational. Take one away and you have stagnation, take the other away and you have anarchy.
