Well, thanks, all for the engaging and challenging discussion, but I still don’t believe that atheism is compatible with conservatism.
However, I do believe it is compatible with libertarianism and objectivism. In fact, it’s de rigueur for objectivism, no?
Libertarianism is a matter of enforcement, not morality.
I don’t know (and once again, I said agnostic, not athiest), but yet here I am, primarily a rabid strict-constructionist conservative and secondarily an agnostic...and my dog is named Dagny. :{)
Which is precisely why, contrary to some here on FR, I have never and will never consider Ayn Rand a Conservative. As an atheist, it naturally followed that Rand has no respect for life and thus was an abortionist. Oh sure, she strung together some clever words, but a Conservative Rand was not. Whatever else she may have stood for, advocating the butchering of God's innocent children is the totality of what Ayn Rand was all about.