Conservatism

So what then is conservatism? Are there not real conservatives on the right? Isn' it unfair to lump then all together in one category?
To the last question, the answer is, yes, of course, it's unfair, but that is what the mainstream media already does. If no one is considered a fascist, it's the same as viewing everyone on the right as a fascist. The mainstream media today acknowledges no meaningful difference between fascism and conservatism. That's a huge problem because there is a big difference between the two.
Start with the name. The root of conservatism is conserve. What is a conservative trying to conserve? For starters, our freedom, our rule of law, our traditions, some of them, certain fundamentals of our society. Keeping these things in mind ask yourself the following....
1. Wouldn't a more conservative America be up in arms over the fact that Congress has not used its authority to declare war on anybody since Dec. 9, 1941, that we have fought five wars over 68 years. at a cost of approximately 100,000 American lives and an indetermine number of Korean, Vietnamese, Iraqi and Afghan lives, all without the declaration of war required of Congress by our Constitution.
Is our Constitution a joke? Real conservatives would say no, and if real conservatives were anything more than an increasingly minor element in the population, they'd be raising hell about this and we would be hearing from them,not from the fascists, bigots and reactionaries who increasingly dominate the Republican Party.
2. In a conservative-dominated America someone would be pointing out that only sociopaths really believe national security justifies anything the government chooses to do. Personal security has no such legal protection
In Illinois, where I live, if a person is across the street from your home, threatening you with bodily harm, you cannot take your gun outside, shoot the loudmouth, and claim it was self-defense. You have to call the police first. Yet, our government, in the name of national security, claims the right to do everyone from tapping your e-mail to interning Americans on the basis of their race, national origin, religion or all of the above, all in the name of national security? In a really conservative America, wouldn't real conservatives be leading the charge to stop all this?
In a real America the answer would be yes, because the real conservative answer to the preceding issue is a government has no more right to do literally anything for national security than an individual citizen does. because the protection of the individual citizen's rights is one of the reasons this particular society exists. America exists for a reason and a real conservative is one who cares what that reason is.
Now in liberalism it is kind of a open question how far the government can and cannot go on national security, but in fascism this is an utterly closed question? The answer, as Dick Chaney keeps reminding us, is anything and everything is, in fact, justified, because the preservation of the United States of America supersedes any discussion of why we want to preserve it. This is the problem.
The philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand despised all things left-wing, because laissez-faire capitalism was indispensible to her idea of the perfect order, yet she refused to associate with the American Right, because she predicted the right-wing would destroy the country faster than the left. This is partly because she saw, coming from Russia, how married the right-wing was to unfairness as a principle, how obsessed it was with the "right people" being in charge, refusing to accept that there's no such thing as the "better class", that people had to prove they were better out there in the competitive world and having done so, should not be burdened any further because they weren't of the so-called "right" class, "right" race, "right" gender, "right" sexual orientation or anything else that the individual's success has already proved irrelevant.
Even worse, she came to realize fascism appeals naturally to people who actually believe in an all-powerful, anthropomorphic God, people who never stop to think it might be a mortal sin to want anything in the universe to have absolute power, as well as a colossal illusion to think absolute power actually exists, any more than absolute zero. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Those who think God's an exception don't even correctly read their scriptures. Six of the 10 Commandments begin with the immortal words, "Thou shalt not". Notice the Bible does not follow the American tradition, putting it in the positive: "Know your limits". If you need to believe your god has no limits eventually you will believe the same about your government and in the name of national security go along with anything: torture, genocide, whatever.
You will also never understand that while you can have dialogue and debate with real conservatives, you can't have that with fascists. The Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, and Ann Coulters of America will not debate you, because having a different point of view automatically makes you a threat in their book. Debating real conservatives is one thing. Debating fascists was proved pointless back in 1938 at Munich. You will not get a better result simply because this is America.