I've got enough agreement in me to go around. I seem to be in an agreeable mood.

I agree that the country is more conservative in many ways -- certainly more conservative than most who post here. For instance, as I've tried to point out before, though the country is nowhere near pro-life, it is certainly more pro-life than it is indescriminately pro-abortion. In other words, though the country wants abortion, it, in majority, thinks that most abortions are immoral or wrong. It doesn't look at the 40,000,000 abortions that have been performed in the last few decades and assume the sad but necessary conclusion that they represent 40,000,000 cases of rape, or 40,000,000 cases of incest. No, I think the majority look at the 40,000,000 abortions and assume most of them are for convenience (vaguely defined) -- and they find that to be "extreme". It also finds the left's hardline position on abortion as the "radical" viewpoint -- at least as radical as any extreme on the right might exhibit.

But I whole-heartedly agree that Bush is not a conservative, even if I dislike the old "dictionary definition" type of arguing about "conservative" and "Liberal" -- language moves on and we all know what, in American politics, is meant by conservative and liberal, and, no, they don't have to do with "conserving" and "liberating", or any other derivitive of the Latin or Greek origins or the words.

Bush is not a conservative because he doesn't show any signs of believing in the functionality of conservative ideology (for instance he spends for political expediency, not economically sound or necessary reasons). Plus, conservative thinking has always been loathe to go to war for ANY reason. Though I don't believe any of the kooky conspiracy theory thinking on Bush's motivation for war, I do think that, as a gamble for fighting what truly is the 21st century's biggest international threat -- terrorism -- it was a gamble based on flawed thinking and miscalculation. If no other miscalculation than just how powerful the anti-war sentiment here in the USA would be or become.

If I were president (God save us all) I would never get us into a war without a significant, politically insurmountable majority of Americans behind the effort. I would do that because 1. it is clear that in military actions of the past 40 years, we have been mostly defeated and/or deflated from within, and 2. It is HIGHLY likely that whatever war I started would have to be finished by a subsequent president and if he does not share the same popular mandate to forge on in the war, it isn't just us that loses -- it will be the side we are on internationally that will lose.