Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head:
"Conservatism" -- like "communism" -- has only one real definition, only one definition that matters: "that which 'conservatives' and the leaders they support do when in power." Conservatism is a set of principles about how government ought to function and the policies which political leaders should implement. And those principles can be known not by how they exist in some Platonic form, abstractly enshrined by think tank groups or in textbooks. One knows it by how its proponents -- "conservatives" -- actually govern and by who and what they support.
|