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"Just because we are conservative"

We?

"doesn't mean we are anti-modernist, does it?"

Modernism has a specific definition within the context of Catholicism. See the writings of Saint Pius X.

"What are American democracy"

America is a republic, not a democracy.

"capitalism"

Capitalism is not an "ism." It's just the way people act when they are free. Goes back as far as history.

"the bill of rights"

The Bill of Rights is grounded in Natural Rights philosophy, which does not fall under the heading of modernism as the term is used in the Catholic Church.

"internet blogging"

The Soviet union had its samizdat; the French revolutionists had their pamphleteers, and in earlier ages information was passed by word of mouth.

BLogging is just a more efficient way to do what has always been done.

Considerable hairsplitting over what is conservative, a democracy versus a republic, and what is an 'ism. As an aside on the issue of capitalism, you seem to be applying the famous American Catholic buffet approach of embracing a moral perspective that the pre-modernist Church condemned (usury)and that John Paul II, and Benedict XVI criticized (free market neo-liberalism) even as you join them in condemning things you find objectionable.

In a conventional historic or cultural sense of modernism the American political system(whatever you choose to call it), certainly the French revolutionary pamphleteers, the Bill of Rights and and the Rights of Man would come under the heading modernist. Freedom of expression, forbidding the establishment of a state religion - These are clearly enlightenment ideas. Of course there are continuities between Medieval and modernist thought, in this conventional sense. Parts of Aquinas could stand on either side of that line.

Seems that aside from the fussing about definitions, the substance of your comment lies in Pius X's injunction against what he considered to be modernist heresies (65 of them!)in the Catholic Church around the beginning of the 20th Century - the Lamentabili Sane and his oath against modernism that was imposed on several generations of Church leaders. This is actually quite interesting, and indeed helpful, in understanding the historical context of Ratzinger's denunciation of modernism. Apparently the Holy Office kept dossiers on church leaders suspected of modernist deviations, including at least two who later became Popes. The current Pope Benedict XVI's namesake - Benedict XV and also John XXIII. John insisted on reviewing his file after becoming Pope and returned it to the Holy Office with the bemused note "Yes, but now we are infallible." It is also interesting how Ratzinger played enforcer both against Liberation theologians, which is not surprising, and also against strident anti-modernist Society of St. Pius X. The shifting tides in Catholic orthodoxy argue against allowing any faction to capture the apparatus of the Church and use it to drive out what it deems to be heretical. This is something that Averroes, the Moslem anticipator of Aquinas' project of reconciling philosophy and revealed truth, observed. Many ideas that were once banned as heretical were later accepted, so the religious institutions have not been able to say with any timeless certainty what is heretical. It undermines the authority of anyone (even a Pope) who would try to use means besides persuasion to define the parameters of the faith.