Conservative…What does it mean?

An interesting question with many answers that are regularly misconstrued or negatively defined for political purposes. Webster’s dictionary has these definitions for 1) conservative (adj) cautious, reserved or moderate and 2) conservatism (n) a policy that advocates moderation, or opposition to change. From these two definitions have risen many different meanings that define a certain dress code all the way to an entire political culture. You can have certain conservative values but not be a “Conservative” in the traditional sense of a political persuasion. As near as I can determine within the current world of USA politics a true blue Conservative within the political spectrum includes the following beliefs:
- a belief in God
- a belief in the Constitution of the USA as a document that is to be followed to the letter without any consideration of current events
- a belief in only the size of government needed to handle basic needs of the society and one that is answerable to the people.
- A belief in public safety nets for only those that truly require them.
- Individualism as opposed to collectives
- Minimum taxation and a government that lives within its means
- Free market capitalism
- Sensible laws and the need to punish those that break them
- A strong and vibrant military that’s role is to protect the Country
- Individual accountability and responsibility
- A strong belief in family values

If you look at each of these you will see automatically that the two political parties do not have a monopoly on the any of the above. In fact if you look back to the sixties you would be hard pressed to see a major difference in a majority of the so-called conservative attributes within either the Democratic or Republican parties. So what happened? I believe the Vietnam War and the amazing prosperity seen in the USA over the last 50 years are the two main factors which have created the large divide seen in politics today. History has shown that the war in “Nam” was not the beginning of an unstoppable spread of Communism as first thought.Therefore the tremendous loss of life appears now to have been unnecessary. Civil resistance to this conflict began a slow move away from unwavering patriotism and toward the “me” generation”. As the Country prospered, everyone wanted a piece of the pie including those that believed in hard work to achieve it as well as those that felt they only had to show up as they deserved get it.. The divide began to widen and today it would appear that there are very few members of the Democratic Party that retained any conservative values and within the Republican Party there are far less “true blue” conservatives than one would believe. The current Government is providing a “shock” to the nation’s system and it will be interesting to see if a “Ronald Reagan” type of Conservatism will arise again or will the conservative values that built this nation go the way of the Dodo bird. I hope not.