[atlanta67]

I know there are naysayers here:

think how bleak the future looked in Nov 1992.

[RightWhale]

Can somebody post the salient points of this possibly interesting or useful article if we can't post the article in its entirety?

[agitator]

What happened is that the liberals redefined the term conservative and the usual statist RINO republicans happily bought into it. The liberals moved "conservative" from the right to the middle so that anybody who would fit the term conservative in 1970 is now a an "extremist." Suckaaahs....

[mmercier]

Good post. There are many newbie conservatives, apparently unfamiliar with the guiding principals of the philosophy in the Freep and elsewhere.

That CAFTA thread disheartened me the other night.

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

An excellent read. Thank you for sharing.

[Crackingham]

as Heritage Foundation President Edwin J. Feulner put it in a recently updated foreword to "The Conscience of a Conservative," the classic 1960 treatise of Barry Goldwater (ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell):

Conservatism is "a vision of the nation and the world as it should be, not a compromise with the world as it" is.

Yet, and save for defense, that's exactly what conservatism largely has become in the early 21st century. Conservatives haven't led, they've acquiesced. Witness the deal-cutting on filibusters. Witness how they lost control of John Bolton's nomination to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Social Security reform? Oh, there's been lots of talk. But there won't be a vote this year. One has to wonder if conservatives ever can bring it to a vote. Chances are if they do, in this climate, it will be an expensive joke. Conservatives haven't enforced the rule of law to crack down on illegal aliens, they've aided and abetted illegals by proposing amnesty. Conservatives haven't defended free speech, they've restricted it through campaign finance "reform." The Internet appears to be next on the hit-list. Conservatives haven't shrunk the size of the federal government and spending, they've enlarged it and increased it.

[Vision]

This is conservatism

http://www.misterpolitics.com/videos.asp

[marty60]

Conservatism is "a vision of the nation and the world as it should be, not a compromise with the world as it" is.

GREAT sentence. And as before the Conserv Repubs are going to have to stop the filthy slavery of illegal aliens.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

the belief in the free enterprise system ... and that community values ought to be set by the communities themselves, not by D.C. and not by the courts."

Well, there’s sort of an inherent contradiction here.

“The Free Enterprise System” wants to be inclusive, not exclusive – it wants to sell you a 50” plasma TV just as badly if you plan to watch XXX movies as if you want of watch the Disney Channel, and a DVD player just as baldly if you are pro-choice as if you are pro-life - it wants to define “community” in an economic, not a “social” sense.

For example it asks consumers:

“Which community are your most a member of? A local “community” of 50,000 people in which perhaps 40,000 want to ban pornography, or a national “community” of 40 million people who want the right to watch pornography beamed into their homes from satellites or rented at the strip-mall and spun up on their DVD players?”

To this end players in market driven systems want uniform national standards, and they want the interests of national economic players to dominate over “community values”, for example to overrule homeowners associations that attempt to ban “unsightly” DirecTV dishes, or municipalities that want to ban cell-phone towers, or local bodies that want to regualte the content they can carry. That’s just the way "free markets" work.

And IMO this contradition is at the heart of the struggle from the soul of the “modern conservative movement”.

[x]

Forty-five years ago, Barry Goldwater was convinced "that most Americans now want to reverse this trend." After all, the federal government had become, as the Chicago Tribune offered at the time, the "biggest land owner, property manager, renter, mover and hauler, medical clinician, lender, insurer, mortgage broker, employer, debtor, taxer and spender in all history."

But Goldwater lost, and by a landslide. What changed people's minds was the great failures of government in the 1960s and 1970s. Now we've come around full circle to the attitude of the late fifties or early sixties. There's less popular discontent and desire to reduce the size of government. People are mostly satisfied with the country and put up with a lot in the name of patriotism and security.

There's plenty of public revulsion now with social and cultural liberalism, but it's low level. It's based in the memory of what came earlier, and the remnants of 60s attitudes. In an uncertain world cultural conservatism doesn't quite translate into a desire for "less state and more freedom."

What made the Reagan-era sentiment so strong is that people had believed in government and been disappointed, so they looked to real change to set things right. Some of the Reagan-era attitudes carry over into the present, but there's not that force of disillusionment to provide the political energy for a change.

Today, conservatism is considered more a part of the status quo. When the next great wave for change comes it may take us in another direction. It's to be hoped that that won't be the case, but I don't see Bush or his successor getting the kind of momentum for real change that FDR or LBJ or RWR benefitted from.

[bayourod]

This guy doesn't even have a clue as to what conservatism is. There are five immutable pillars of conservative philosophy:

1. Opposition to admission of Red China to the U.N.
2. Opposition to giving away the Panama canal.
3. Return to the gold standard.
4. Support for the death penalty, and
5. Opposition to forced busing.

[hosepipe]

"A government that is big enough to give you all you need is big enough to take it all away" -Barry M. Goldwater

" I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."- Barry M. Goldwater

"The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government."- Barry M. Goldwater

"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"- Barry M. Goldwater

[afnamvet]

With all due respect to Ken Mehlman, conservatism in its current form is a pale imitation of what it once was, if conservatism at all. And if today's Republicans truly want to make their mark in service to our founding precepts, they'll reject liberalism-lite and return to the Goldwater standard.

That's a BIG "if".