I liked one of Mark’s books.
However, both of these two don’t understand conservatism.
It is not about ideology, but about prudence combined with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
They are TOO ideological to be conservative.
Conservatives are NOT purists.
And in fact none other than Russell Kirk, author of the 1953 'The Conservative Mind', said that conservatism is the antithesis of ideology.
Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during the past two centuries. After some introductory remarks on this general theme, I will proceed to list ten such conservative principles.