Why liberals should never be in power...

[A Black Falcon]

As I said, European Conservatives are quite different from American ones... they aren't highly religious like ours are, for the biggest difference. And yes, they push anti-immigrant legislation... though it's the same here -- it's Pat Buchanan, not Ralph Nader, who wants to build a wall to keep out the Mexicans... but they go farther, actually banning and greatly limiting immigration into their countries. This step seems in line with those limitations so it's definitely a move by conservatives... it's limiting civil liberties, and that isn't usually something liberals support unless there's very good reason. Yes, the fact that this is about religion puts it into a somewhat grey area where you could see some liberals supporting it if given good reason... but still, banning things to supress opinions is more a conservative thing than liberal. Yes, headscarves are a symbol of a more radical kind of Islam than the French are comfterble with, but I don't think banning them will really help there... actually if anything it'll probably just harden Muslim opposition to changing to accept the modern world...

Oh, and you just need to remember that by your standards European Conservatives aren't especially "conservative"... similar with Canadians I think.

whereas in America liberal groups are taking over stances historically held by conservative groups (opposition to free trade and foreign intervention, racial discrimination)

Liberals do not support racial discrimination. Absolutely not.

And before someone starts, Affirmative Action is in no way racial discrimination! But I don't want to argue that again, we've been through that arguement several times now...