Dumb_Ox,
Sorry again for the silly response I posted to your original comments to me. At 2 AM EST, my mind was not working too well, and I believe I confused Russell Kirk with Robert Nozick if you are familiar with his work.
If I recall correctly from reading Kirk in college (20-plus years ago) he was a big believer in the idea that custom and tradition, manifested as culture, were the foundation of any rational society. And since he was a big believer in Natural Law and the idea that religion was the driving force behind culture, he would naturally have disdain for ideological labels. Correct me if I'm wrong on that since you seem to have a better recollection of Kirk than I do.
If my reading of Kirk is correct, then I would argue that his version of Conservatism was pretty much rejected by the vast majority of the people in the United States in the post-FDR era. I think modern Conservatism has taken the best of what Kirk had to offer, which I would argue is the strong reliance on Property Rights as the ultimate expression of Freedom and a healthy respect for the concept of Natural Law, while ignoring what seems to be the weakness...the idea that class differences and convention were static and necessary aspects of a just society. The so-called "Fusion" concept I would guess.
Egalitarian happy talk about a classless society is fantastical. It only turns the elites into contortion artists denying their privileged place in society, thus discouraging them from exercising their privileges responsibly. See, for example, Paris Hilton.
As for convention, I forget precisely how it fit into Kirk's system and what he had in mind.
Not to read too much into your words about "aspects of a just society," but I do remember that Kirk's aim was for not merely a just society but also a good society, of which justice is but one part. Some conventions cannot be easily justified(heh) upon concerns for justice alone, though such conventions may foster the truly good life. They are basic for a healthy culture.
I brought up the oxymoron of "prudent ideology" earlier. I think the phrases "a just culture" or a "culture of justice" are similarly awkward and nonsensical.
Destroying cultural conventions in the name of justice can rob us as a society of those tiny shared things which bind us together. When it is no longer accepted practice for, say, a man to open a door for a woman, out of some concern for abstract equality, we have lost a small treasure we once held in common. Though these seem like marginal losses, recall that value is often created--or destroyed--on the margins.