I don’t need to read anything, MamaB (although I will check your recommendations out for recreational purposes). I have a Masters in Western Civiliation and know far more about politics, democracy, and the 3,500 year-old traditions and constructions that went into it’s making and shake my head at what they have become.
I truly don’t wish to argue with you, but I simply don’t believe that there are conservatives of the stripe that many portay themselves to be, or for whom many fervently pray for on these threads. I guess what I object to most about some species of ‘conservatism’ is that there is a particularly nasty variety which insists, to everyone’s detriment, that ‘half a loaf is the same as no bread’.
It is this brand of conservatism that ticks me off more than anything else, even though I do realize that many other conservatives are well-meaning folks.