I don’t approve of your definition of conservative.
I’m as “conservative" as the next FReeper - which is to say, I am a classical liberal. Like you, I expect, I believe in the Constitution as a definition of the public interest. Imperfect, yes, but the best that could be constructed and agreed to. That makes me “conservative” in terms of the understood political spectrum of America, but in reality Americans believe in progress. Not progress of government control, but progress of, by, and for the American people. “The progress of science and useful arts,” as the Constitution itself puts it. The meaning of the term “liberal” was inverted, according to Safire’s New Political Dictionary, in the 1920s.In 1910 Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech was liberal. By 1930, “liberal” meant the opposite of that. Opposite, as in meaning, “You didn’t build that.” The two are opposites.