I didn't come up through the ranks of the conservative movement... I came to these revelations about my own personal politics in a realm in which those books, those ideas, the canon of conservatism, is nonexistent.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was never a very convincing social conservative, and always avoided associating myself with that part of the broader conservative movement.
But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
The conservative movement is about government playing its important yet limited role, and about not falling into the trap of believing that every problem has an exclusive government answer for it.
The conservative movement today is like that tall ship with its proud captain: strong, accomplished but veering off course into the dangerous and uncharted waters of big government republicanism.
It has become more acceptable to describe yourself as a conservative, but not everyone who uses that term about themselves really is truly conservative.
The whole culture of my background was deeply Conservative.
I'm conservative on some things, and I'm not on others.
It is a weird thing, because most people tend to get more conservative as they get older, but I find myself going the opposite way. I am sure that by the end I will be selling Marxist pamphlets on the Holloway Road.
Conservatism as a formal political doctrine didn't exist in America in 1940. The word 'conservative' was associated primarily with fringe groups - anti-industrial Southern agrarians and the anti-New Deal tycoons who led the Liberty League.
I've been a conservative my whole life. There is nothing hard-right or far-right about anything. I just believe in ideas and that ideas matter in history, and that's my background, and that's the way I'd like to be portrayed.