Core beliefs to "conservative" or "liberal"?

In this time of seemingly palpable political polarization, what is it, exactly, that's dividing us so passionately? Is it one "coherent" socio-political ideology vs. a very different one? If so, is there any legitimacy to identifying those ideologies as "liberal and "conservative"?

Or is it more accurate these days simply to call those who like and support President George W. Bush "conservatives" and everyone else "liberals"?

Or: are we watching those ideologies actually morphing before our very eyes, from, say, the conservatives of the limited-government, balanced-budget days of Dwight Eisenhower in 1959 to the powerful-government, deficits-are-OK era of Reagan/Bush, starting just two decades after Ike? And the liberals of the "government-help-the-downtrodden" days of Roosevelt through Johnson to the Clintonian era of less government help and balanced budgets?

To put it another way, are government "intrusion"/"protection" and deficit spending the two hallmark issues of the last 40-50 years? If so, what does that have to do with being liberal or conservative?

Or is it more accurate to say that there was so much social ferment in the 60's and 70's that lots of new issues arose, involving ethnicity, gender and the "rights" of Joe Everyperson, and the use/protection of natural resources, alongside the traditional issues?

Does being liberal or conservative simply mean keeping track of where one or another party stands on an ever-shifting, eclectic set of issues, having almost nothing to do with "core values" or ideology?

Or is it yet even more pertinent to say that the American two-party system has evolved (perhaps unconsciously) largely toward the "purpose" of suppressing the extremes of ALL ideology? Resulting, many would say, in ideology-less "mush" and/or gridlock?

Older definitions of "conservative" and "liberal" revolved around ideas such as:

1. * people are stained with Original Sin at birth, and government must constrain their evil impulses (conservative) VS.

* people are either born "good" or at least "neutral" (and thus shaped more than anything by environmental influences (liberal)

2. * the highest purpose of government is to protect and enforce the established order of authority, laws protecting property rights and inherited wealth, and social stability (conservative) VS.

* as opportunities for individual development expand, through education and the safeguarding of "rights", social and political change is inevitable and relatively harmless, even at the expense of tolerable social turmoil (liberal)

3. * those who have earned or otherwise accumulated wealth have the rights both to keep most of it, and to wield political power commensurate with a higher level of achivevement (conservative) VS.

* to guard against possibly revolutionary mob rule or permanent class hatreds, the rich must be forced to relinquish some wealth in order to establish a humane "floor" of living standards for the poor (liberal)

There is obvious overlap between (2) and (3), but a difference in emphasis on the matter of how "proactive" government should be in these matters.

Or---bottom line---is most of this a smokescreen, and is the bottom-line issue, as it always has been, class warfare: the "haves" VS. the "have-nots", with many other issues more or less important in proportion to how they affect this one?

In the 2004 campaign, Republicans accused Democrats of inciting class warfare.
Democrats called on Bush to be a uniter, not a divider. Was everyone talking about the same divisions?