That is certainly the classic meaning of the word, "conservative". The usual meaning of conservative in the American context, I tend to say, is a devotion to (1) limited government, (2) individual rights, (3) private property. This is what in another era would have been called a classic liberal, but is now generally called a conservative.
There is obviously a big overlap, as the classic liberal type of conservative is often also a classic conservative in the traditionalist sense; it only works in the US, though, where "traditional values" include a love for liberty and constitutionalist government.
I understand the devotion to heritage, but I always get queasy, as often when someone I am talking to starts talking about "heritage", I find out halfway into the conversation that the heritage he means is not the same one I mean. Which leads me to the final element in the conservative canon, which for me is absolute, which is (4) color-blind citizenship.
Conservatives, the limited government kind, after a lifetime of insisting on color-blind citizenship, all during the bad old days of Jim Crow, continue to insist on colorblind government. This was our position when our opponents were racialists of the traditionalist school, and it continues to be our position in the face of the current left-wing racialism.
Trent Lott forgot that, for a Republican, our "heritage" is precisely a devotion to color-blind citizenship. We support states rights, the 9th and 10th ammendments, but for their rightful purpose, which is to protect individual liberty, not as a pretext to oppress it. In joining the Republicans, he should have been adhering to our heritage, as a moral decision, making it his own. Not using it as a cover for another heritage that we rejected our entire history.
While I would agree with you that people should not be arbitrarily held back because of their racial or other inherited traits, but allowed to achieve as their individual abilities and efforts warrant, that does not mean that a Society with diverse groups can just blithely imagine that everyone is the same. Nor is there anything wrong with Whites preferring Whites, Blacks preferring Blacks, Red men preferring Red men, etc., in their own private dealings. Republicans from Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt, certainly did not ascribe to a need to imagine that racial consciousness was wrong.
That said, it is very unfortunate that either party would want to pour gasolene on a smoldering problem, today, by politicizing it--read "demagoguing" it. Certainly there have been times when each party has done so, but latterly the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party has taken such demagoguery to a new low. But that said, there is neither virtue nor conservatism in pretending that there are not differences between us. It is far better to discuss them in a spirit of good will, than arrogantly pretend there is virtue in not doing so.
Other than that, I applaud what you have to say, except for the suggestion that we should pass judgment on how others employ the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Clearly, the essence of freedom has always been the right to use your freedom in a manner of which others do not approve. When George Washington spoke of our system being dependent upon "private morals," he was not postulating Federal dictation of morals, but the individual responsibility of a people to make their own decisions and to respect the right of others to make their own decisions in all matters that were not part of the limited common sphere established.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site