Whose job is it to say what a true conservative is?
1. Anarchists;
2. People who think that there are no meaningful political definitions;
3. People who seem incapable of making distinctions between liberal and conservative and other "labels" which are actually effective shorthand for entire systems of principles;
4. People who act as if no one before the present moment has systematically examined basic questions and come to systematic and consistent conclusions;
5. Followers of Margaret Sanger (or Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin or Mao Tse-Tung or Karl Marx or Lenin or other leftists) in any way, shape or form;
6. Xenophobes, frightened or otherwise;
7. Racists who deny the essential equality before God and before the law of each human being, regardless of the qualifications of birth. Each of us may qualify to be punished by the law but only by our individual acts or omissions not because of our respective ancestries;
8. Foreign policy ostriches who think as the Main Street bean counters did before Pearl Harbor that nothing is worthy of war;
9. Members of such groups as FAIR who seem to think that exclusive rights to own the United States, its governments and its public policies are some sort of unearned birthright and never to be extended to others.
A person can be a conservative but not without a measured knowledge and respect for what Russell Kirk described as the permanent things, not without a reverence for the values embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and not without the courage and wisdom which have combined with the grace if God to keep us free.
If you feel compelled to suggest that one person's ideals and beliefs are as good as another's, you are almost inevitably wrong. What is true and good and right, is true and good and right. What is not is not.