I doubt that there are many here who remember when we actually had a conservative government. Some would say Ronald Reagan 1981 - 1989. Though he was a conservative some would say that we have never had a conservative government.
Clearly DDM is wrong when he claims the founders as conservative. They were not. They were, by and large, progressive British Subjects seeking to establish a revolutionary government based upon liberal principles. Had they been conservative they would have been Tories.
Those who DDM and his 'ilk' mistakenly call conservative are actually what are best called neo-cons, that is to avoid calling their icons Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity by their scientific name....moron.
MB is closest when he says:
an ideological disposition favoring timid technological progress, maintenance of the geopolitical status-quo, entailing a minimum investment of public capital.
I would say that these are manifestations of a conservative mind set rather than the theory behind it.
William F. Buckley Jr. defined a conservative in a similar way. He said
:“A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling "Stop!"”
There are two books that explain American conservatism perhaps better than all of the others combined; Buckley's "God and Man at Yale" and Barry Goldwater's "The Conscious of a Conservative".
So what do the two greatest conservatives of our times say about conservatism?
Buckley said:
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.”
"You cultivate the essential virtues: high purpose, intelligence, decency, humility, fear of the Lord, and the passion for freedom.”
"Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night.
Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people,
does not suppress medical research,
does not peek in bedroom windows
Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”
“Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
"We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down."
Goldwater said:
“Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
“I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”
“Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism”
"You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”
"There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom."
"My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." - This one is for you MB 
And for God's sake POFO conservatives. Listen to this from the father of conservatism in the US:
Goldwater: I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."
Many so called libertarians and Conservatives today are completely missing the point of conservatism. They forget what it is that 'real' conservatives are trying to conserve. The conservatism that I respect is a rich tapestry of ideas that go far deeper than reading Atlas Shrugged, googling Ron Paul and memorizing chalk-talk by Glen Beck. Those who want to call themselves conservatives who have never read the two books I mentioned above are quite frankly full of shit. Those who will continue to call themselves conservatives and not read these books are fools. And as many hand-jobs as they want to give one another, there are people out here who will see right through their shallow understanding of the issues and sophomoric debating techniques.
"The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages." -- Jim Hightower
- By wat0n
- By ingliz
- By Potemkin