What you’re omitting from your otherwise sage observation is that there is a cohort of the ‘conservative’ movement that consists of moralizing whinges, Bible-thumping pecksniffs and the like.
These were the people behind Prohibition - and they were the people behind the start of the “War on [some] Drugs” - eg, Bennett and his sermonizing ilk.
These people need to find a hobby or something, because after 100 years of their whinging about the “evils of [insert something you can put into your body here]”, I’ve well and truly had my fill of these morons.
Oh, yes, there are busybody conservatives. I did omit them, though didn’t mean to pretend they didn’t exist. They weren’t behind Prohibition alone. Progressives were, too. It may be hard to tweeze the ideologies out since Bible thumpers could be progressive back then, which is hard to wrap your mind around nowadays. Or maybe not, since we have churches preaching “social justice” and Liberation Theology.
I meant only to say they there were antiwar and antiprohibition conservatives, whatever the ideological alignment since the 60s. My saying neocons never let conservatism into their hearts may imply conservatism is fundamentally antiimperialistic and antiwar, and further not bringing up pro-prohibition conservatives may imply antiprohibition is fundamentally conservative. Indeed I think they are, though I am aware busybodiness has always been with us.
Certainly it is with our movement today. I’m not saying they aren’t conservatives. I do think they’re less conservative than others, but I’ll hold that back for now. It’s just that to jump over on any particular issue would not mean to make you a leftist, especially when you may have forgotten where people on our side used to be.
I like to seperate the dominant movements by whether they advocate overall a more or less powerful central government. But both sides have their liberty principles and their order lrinciples
Our party as of now is for order on drugs and war, at least, and their side for damnable near everything else. So in the balance we are the lliberty party, though not in every particular.
Them again, it’s a charade to pretend there are only two sides. We tend to collect together, partly because of how the political system is setup. Bit there are as many ways of calibrating ideological positions as there are minds to adopt positions. And the idea that we ought not drop the Drug War because libs are against it is insane.