Like “liberal” “conservative” now means so many different things it is often hard to communicate across ideological lines. Compared to “liberals” love of management by ‘experts,’ it once meant people who thought society was a complex network of interactions that centralized government would probably hurt more than help if it did much intervention. I did then and still agree with that outlook.

But today people using the same name are urging radical changes in policies that in some cases are many decades old, and doing so with a minority of the vote supporting them. They seem to have contempt for values such as compromise- which is a basic conservative value.

Today many now calling themselves conservatives want Muslims expelled, think this is a Christian nation (and most Christians often aren’t Christians in their eyes), want to repeal gay marriage, want to repeal much of the EPA, support making it harder to vote, want to weaken women’s control over their own bodies while doing little to help with health care for mothers and their kids, massively expand military spending, militarize the police, support lawlessness by ranchers on public lands, and weaken public education in favor of for-profit education. They say they do not like corporate domination but elect people who serve corporations even more faithfully than corporatist Democrats like Clinton and Obama.

Much of justification for these policies relies on demonizing some group: Muslims, gays, Mexicans, public school teachers, scientists. These are the people are who I am aiming at. The best of them do not easily appreciate people unlike themselves and some are simply racists.

Barry Goldwater, “Mr. Conservative” in 1964, could not win a Republican primary in many areas today. He’d be called a RINO. Goldwater himself said as much before he died. Today’s ‘movement conservatives’ are radicals by any normal meaning of the word.

If I remember the early stages of our conversation correctly, you said that in your experience conservatives were more generous than liberals. That is a common claim on the right. I responded that many conservatives were very good and generous people in that sense but (in my experience) had more difficulty than liberals dealing compassionately with those who were much different than them. We ALL have that difficulty, but to different degrees. I also pointed out that I spent considerable time myself assisting others on health issues- which Louis Weeks consistently distorted, but that is what he does.

When people make a personal connection they usually recognize commonalities they might not have recognized in more anonymous circumstances. That you have the friendly relations with the gay kid is wonderful. When I was a conservative libertarian in college long ago my attitude towards gays changed when a guy I knew poured his heart out after being rejected by his lover - and I realized “He’s just like me except he’s turned on by men.” I couldn’t share the attraction, but I could share the emotion rejection caused. Personal encounters for normal people usually enlarge their hearts.

So I am in no way demonizing what I regard as fairly traditional conservatives such as you appear to be- but I am completely opposed to the mind set of those who call themselves ‘movement conservatives’ or see themselves as putting party before country.