Among your examples I actually think that "liberal"/"authoritarian" are mostly opposite each other. But "conservative" in its simplest form is resistance to change, so it ends up being one end of almost any political dimension. That's why in most two-party political systems you can point at one of the parties and call it "conservative". "Progressive" is also very generic and can mean very different things depending on the society, but it's generally in opposition to "conservative".

Yes actually. How else would you describe considering empathy a weakness?