Not a conservative, but am addicted to hearing what conservatives think.

I had hoped somebody would post a characterisation of liberals on the What is a conservative thread, and here one is, cool. It's a little general, quite a bit slanted about the trendy, jerky, fad-liberalism, and I have to disagree.

There certainly is some liberal nannyish nonsense, but conservative stuff also. There's fashionable liberalism ready-made for people to priss around in.

We've had to amend the constitution because it wasn't understood the first time, it's expressed ideals could not be realised then, in regard to equality particularly. Documents and language, ideals and reality are like that. My favorite phrase is These truths we hold to be self-evident. That kills me.

A conservative friend of mine who lives to hunt manages to agree that some people shouldn't operate a gun, a competence test like driving a car doesn't bug him--he's been hunting with people he doesn't want out there. Others feel that it opens the door to further restrictions, but I don't think it's going to happen. Those "gateway" arguments don't make real sense. I know a guy who's been standing in the gateway to hard drugs for 30 years, smoking pot, doesn't even use legal drugs, no cigarettes, doesn't drink.

Maybe it's people, not government, but in government by the people--I'm not sure what you're saying. There aren't any kings. But liberals of my sort believe that responsibilities in regard to negligence, incompetence, abuse of the rights of others are undermined by demonstrable biases, by the legal doctrine of incorporation, which proposes a company is a living thing apart from those who make the decisions. And by selective enforcement of law, biased toward the wealthy. That when a company ceo is rewarded for running a company into the ground, something isn't working.

Things get complicated, despite what we'd prefer. Free enterprise has hidden costs, if you think about it. Was it liberals who knew better than everyone else and poured our money into nuclear power, which would never make it in free enterprise? Still hasn't?

The best conservative thinkers I've found finally throw up their hands and wonder why we are evil. Government can do a few things well, when it's composed of--people--who believe in it instead of people who don't and have nothing better in mind than to bend it to their own interests.

   As for abortion, I've never had to confront it personally, don't like to mouth around about it. But I see a disparity in the moral allowances we'll grant depending on who is making the decisions. Conservatives have been slow on all that, no matter what anyone says, they have, damn it. And now conservatives teach us the lessons of slavery. Well, if conservatives understood the ideals of the constitution the first time liberals wouldn't need to re-write it so they'd finally get it. Last I heard most people support abortion as a choice, rather than some lone self-appointed elite liberal judge foisting it on us, as you seem to think.