So, considering this place is christian conservatives, the big question or questions. When it comes to politics, What does conservatism mean to you, plus do you like it or hate it? And... What do you think of certain conservatives out there? Oh and who here is conservative, and you don't have to answer them all if you don't want to. Just a big thread about conservatism. Opinions anyone?

I don't pay attention to the labels in politics they are all posers who lie their way into office. You can name them a democrat or republican or conservative or liberal the point is they are all the same. Mcdonalds, Burger King, Wendys, Taco Bell they are all food places some might taste better to you then others but the point is they all have the same outcome.

Well how would you define conservatism though?

I guess I would say a conservative in my opinion would be someone who keeps it old school and knows how to manage stuff. Example: Enforcing the constitution instead of destroying it and making bull new laws where you no longer have privacy or right to bare arms.

So far as I can tell conservatism is still closely linked to Edmund Burke when he says in Thoughts and Details on Scarcity of 1795: "so that in my opinion, there is no way of preventing this evil [that agriculture and harvests are sometimes poor] which goes to the destruction of all our agriculture, and of that part of our internal commerce which touches our agriculture the most nearly, as well as the safety and very being of Government, but manfully to resist the very first idea, speculative or practical, that it is within the competence of the Government, taken as Government, or even of the rich, as rich, to supply the poor, those necessaries which it has pleased the Divine Providence for a while to with-hold from them. We, the people, ought to be made sensible, that it is not in breaking the law of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God, that we are to place hope of softening the Divine displeasure to remove any calamity under which we suffer, or which hangs over us." (my emphasis) Yes, law of commerce = law of nature = law of God. It is that combination that should be most unsettling, but at times it does seem that conservatism really holds something like that as a principle. But anyway...

In the end though in the Reflections on the Revolution in France Burke's point over and again is that such revolution, regardless of the intentions, is the wrong way to go and will always be destructive, but that doesn't mean reform isn't necessary. Change is inevitable but cannot sensibly occur with drastic actions and overturning of established institutions. Nominally this is what conservative means. Conservatism has a different shape today because of a complex history etc of asking this question of what it means to hold to the current socio-economic or political configuration. But I think the story of American Conservatism in the 20th century is one of turning it into a politics of its own, as opposed to progressivism, which has always been defined by a particular politics.

From the Burke quote it's easy to see that to be conservative is nearly by definition anti-political, especially where it recommends that the state's role is to provide a minimum of conditions for the working of a free market and security. People just want to live their private lives by their own private means and are constrained only to the degree they constrain others (namely, you can't interfere with my free activity, hence I am at least constrained to not interfere with your free activity) and the state, or movements of political coordination should be limited as they tend to interfere with that private activity. Neoconservatism is the most recent answer to the "problem" of it being anti-political, and without apparently giving up this emphasis on individual private activity, it sought to create a "conservative politics" in response to "progressive politics". By politics here of course I mean a movement that relates/reconfigures private life and public life or the state (so a sequence of events that led to the civil rights act for instance is an example of "progressive" politics). The real question that is always contentious, but always relevant, is whether conservatism as politics, as movement, is conservative. Neoconservatism is anything but conservative (for instance it's easily arguable that isolationism is a conservative position, unlike neocon interventionism). Yet the frame moves, which is why it would not strictly speaking be a conservative position to desire the repeal, say, of the 19th amendment (women's suffrage). Such a repeal would obviously amount to more than a reform, it would seek to revoke rights, make significant institutional change etc... But of course if some fringe political movement desired such a thing we'd label them "conservative" for some reason.

In short, what was conservative policy-wise for Burke is not now for us, although his approach definitely is. The term today is abused as much as "liberal" is by "public" political discourse. Vehemence against government has traditionally been (and of course still is) a preoccupation with the Left, or at least vehemence against the "liberal capitalist state" etc etc, but the Left doesn't have much representation in the US. That many neocons were ex-Trotskyites was not problematic in this regard. It's interesting to me that with that movement, most likely because of this leftism uneasily sitting at its foundation, many "conservatives" started sounding like anarchists (in the non-pejorative sense, I mean the "direct democracy" anarcho-commune sort of anarchists). Since issues with the state are so popular now, I'd contend that a conservative view of the state would be marked by the usual skepticism toward its promises, opposition to clear violations of civil liberties (wiretapping etc regardless of reason), opposition to the continued expansion of presidential power that has defined the presidency over the last century (an expansion that really takes off from Teddy Roosevelt on) if not a push for the office to be reduced, but general belief in stability of the state. In the end these sorts of things are associated with many liberals, but the attitude described earlier about non-interference is liberal in the first place (because liberal isn't the "opposite" of conservative and is anything but statist). I appreciate the anti-statism, but it would be a major shift, believe it or not, if we actually shrank the government to a minimum (remember it grew during the Reagan years, so of course in that way his administration was genuinely conservative) and would require a surprisingly radical movement in terms of American politics.

Well to me, when I think of conservatism regarding American politics. I think real conservatism is conserving the constitutional rights, and what was intended and the values of the founders. Of course the morals to.