[kesg]

This essay from someone with impeccable "conservative" credentials raises the following question in my mind: what, in fact, is a conservative? I know what a liberal is. A liberal is a person who uses the coercive power of government to own or control my property and to tell me what to think or do. But how are so-called conservatives like Will any different? For example, after making a good general point that the Bush Administration isn't giving sufficient thought to what the government should be doing, he then muddles his point by saying that it is not inconsistent with his notion of conservatism for the government to force me, through progressive taxation, to pay for someone else's drug prescription -- a notion that would have been considered Marxist in the late 19th and early 20th Century.

So, is the argument between so-called "conservatives" and "liberals" only over the degree of ownership or control over my life and my property, or is the disagreeement more fundamental?

[tdadams]

I know what a liberal is. A liberal is a person who uses the coercive power of government to own or control my property and to tell me what to think or do.

I would disagree with that. What you described is a leftist/fascist. I would like to see the word liberal restored to its true meaning. Today's leftists are anything but liberal.

[Allan]

he then muddles his point by saying
that it is not inconsistent with his notion of conservatism
for the government to force me, through progressive taxation,
to pay for someone else's drug prescription --
a notion that would have been considered Marxist
in the late 19th and early 20th Century.

It still is Marxist in the early 21st Century
as is progressive taxation, itself,
an idea, which, I believe Marx himself
considered an essential prelude to the establishment of a Communist state.