Re: the right and conservatism

I do generally agree with your distinction, Chronicler. My only hold-up is that it can be easy to slip into a theoretical idea of what conservatism "is", when it is questionable whether it has ever actually lived up to those ideas among its common practitioners (much in the same way that many said that communism's success or failure could not be judged because it has never been truly tried).

For the average conservative joe 6-pack out there, I think conservatism can best be summed up as a resistance to change. They will resist change whether it involves the values of caution and prudence or whether it requires less temparate and more radical resistance.

Of course, sometimes change does need to be resisted, and thats why, as I said before, it is important to have a principled conservative movement. Again, I think we mostly agree, but I feel like attributing values like caution and prudence to a political movement is a bit of an over-generalization when you look at the history of how said political movement has behaved.