"liberals (whose ideals have paradoxically been claimed by conservatives in modern America)"
Resolving the paradox is easy. "Classical liberalism" [1] basically won, but it won a long time ago. If you stick to "classical liberalism" you're basically being a conservative in the stick-to-the-old-stuff-that-works sense. (Because you should never use the words "conservative" or "liberal" without being clear about exactly which meaning you are using. Leave them adrift and they are worthless.) What we call liberals today is not where the term started; call it "progressivism" if you like. But absolutely there is a way in which an older meaning of "liberal" matches up with the modern meaning of "conservative", without contradiction.
I wouldn't say it is correct to say conservatives have "claimed" liberal ideas; conservatives are (broadly) the ones who, for better or worse, never let go of them in their classical liberal form, while the term "liberal" moved on over the years and turned into something totally unrecognizable by the original meaning of the term. (I do not mean that as any sort of moral judgment. It is simply an observation that language shifts over time.)
Resolving the paradox is easy. "Classical liberalism" [1] basically won, but it won a long time ago. If you stick to "classical liberalism" you're basically being a conservative in the stick-to-the-old-stuff-that-works sense. (Because you should never use the words "conservative" or "liberal" without being clear about exactly which meaning you are using. Leave them adrift and they are worthless.) What we call liberals today is not where the term started; call it "progressivism" if you like. But absolutely there is a way in which an older meaning of "liberal" matches up with the modern meaning of "conservative", without contradiction.
I wouldn't say it is correct to say conservatives have "claimed" liberal ideas; conservatives are (broadly) the ones who, for better or worse, never let go of them in their classical liberal form, while the term "liberal" moved on over the years and turned into something totally unrecognizable by the original meaning of the term. (I do not mean that as any sort of moral judgment. It is simply an observation that language shifts over time.)
[1]: In this sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberal