No. You had it right. You either are a conservative or you aren't.
Lots of people try to cash in on the respectability of conservative principles by being hyphenated conservatives. That is, they claim to adhere to one or another of our views, like a "fiscal conservative." Beware, this is usually deceit. What a liberal means by being "fiscally conservative" is that he will vote for huge tax increases to pay for his wild spending. Then there's no deficit, see? -- so it's "conservative." Which, btw, is bad economics along with being dishonest. Increasing taxes almost invariably increases the deficit.
The three original strands of modern conservatism can conveniently be traced to landmark works in the 1950s. These strands were traditional (Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 1953); libertarian, which was a different species from today's libertarians! -- (most importantly, from National Review, which was launched in 1955; also from Hayek, the Mt. Pelerin Society, von Mises, Human Events, and infusing the Goldwater movement); the third strand was anti-communism (Whittaker Chambers, Witness, 1952. His foreword, Chambers: Letter to my Children, is as good an account as was ever written of the war between the philosophies of left and right -- the war that rages right here, right now.)
These philosophies were fused into one conservatism. They were like the three legs of a stool. You needed all three, or it didn't stand up. You could still be a libertarian or a traditionalist or an anti-communist, but if you were a conservative, you were all three. The strands fit each other and enhanced each other. For instance, all three strands were highly active in National Review. Apart from the Buckleys, almost every early editor was an ex-Communist -- Frank Meyer, Willi Schlamm, Suzanne Lafollette, James Burnham and for a short time, Whittaker Chambers himself. Who better to fight the Communists than those who knew the enemy camp from the inside? But Russell Kirk was on the staff too. Frank Meyer, once a high CP official, wrote as a libertarian. Those two never saw eye to eye, but they worked together for the conservative good.
I don't think it's for us to pick and choose pieces out of the conservative whole. Our duty is to defend and burnish the timeless conservatism that we inherit from intellectual and moral masters.
Exactly true of the past coalition prior to 2000. I don't understand why we threw all this away like so much garbage. I have been trying hard to pinpoint the change in behavior, and to understand why.
Of course, each time I point a finger it gets bit off, or I am in danger of losing my entire hand.
It's a sad state of affairs non the less, and we cannot repair this without leadership. As we speak, whats left of the coalition is like a rudderless ship, steaming in slow circles, only because of the magic of rotating torque, and occasionally lurching side to side, but there is a distinct sound of water pouring in now, and I don't plan to go down with the ship.
I have spent the better part of the forty years since becoming politically aware, trying to build party unity and take the congress. Once that was achieved, something happened.
I don't have another forty years, and I don't have the answer in any case. I can only watch as everything hoped for sinks beneath the surface.
Damn shame.....Really is...A damn shame.