Both the parties have lost their way — the right to the paranoid moralists and the left to I-have-no-idea-what. IMHO, it’s not the parties or ideologies that are adrift, its the politicians.

None of them DO anything anymore. Remember when Senate hearing actually had an effect beyond just getting soundbites recorded? When natinal disasters were responded to, rather than photographed in front of? When wars were taken seriously? When politicians had beliefs and fought for them? Now its doing the bare minimum to get re-elected, and God forbid a politician actually try to accomplish a goal. Much easier to just talk about them on the Sunday talk show circuit.

The end game is the same, no matter which brand of Socialism you choose. Eventually, there are just too damn many parasites and too few achievers to support them, bringing down the entire Socialist house of cards in a momentous implosion.

The only difference between Socialism and Socialism Lite is the time it will take for the Socialist regime to reach critical mass and collapse. If my ultimate destination is the same, no matter which path I choose, why would I opt for your scenic route (enlightened conservatism) when the direct route (voting Demoncrat) puts the American Experiment out of its misery, quickly, mercifully?

You’ll probably call me a political Neanderthal but I happen to believe that the American Experiment can still work. When the dust from the collapse settles and the parasites who gnawed away America’s foundations are condemned to the fate they so richly deserve, those pesky rugged American individuals will emerge to pick up the pieces. They’ll dump your ‘we need to get real’ conservatism into the trash heap and get back to those denigrated American basics: a limited government whose primary function is maximizing inalienable individual liberty.

It’s as simple as, “If at first you don’t succeed…”

I rest my case.

” - a recognition that conservatism needs to have its best and brightest strike out and find new ways of defining what it means to be a conservative in 21st century America”

I can’t imagine how it’s helpful to define what it means to BE something. I’d rather have the best and brightest analyzing jihadi internet traffic. I used BE a “liberal democrat” till I discovered it’s all great society horsepoop. Bush claims to BE a conservative but he’s definitely not an idealogue, otherwise we wouldn’t have ‘no child left behind’, a huge push for amnesty, a tera-buck prescription drug program, Clintonesque deal-making with the Norks, and perhaps a nation-building program in Iraq. [Now John Bolton is a real conservative.] But I like Bush despite all the mistakes because almost anyone else would have caved on Iraq with disastrous results. What I’m saying is, I’ve decided not to BE anything (though the looney left would probably call me a fascist). For example, I could support Guliani because the struggle against the beheaders is paramount. The main thing is to make the main thing the main thing.

I think you comment on the free market fixing miners’ working conditions is exactly right. The free market can take care of most things, but not all. I’d never want to abolish OSHA, but the Dept. of Education is a different matter.

But you are forgetting one of the markets that do fix the kinds of problems you describe. It is called politics wherein what are exchanged are not goods and money, but votes, lobbying, ideas, propaganda, and such for government action.

Good point about social cons “distorting” the conservative movement.

From what I’ve read, people like Hayek et. al. see conservatism and “values” in a quite a different light than the anti-abortion/anti-gay marriage crowd.

There is nothing ‘wrong’(well there might be something ‘wrong’ with some of them IMO, but that’s just me) with those values, but there is possibly a great deal wrong with some of the ‘messengers’ and the message format. ‘Social Conservatism’ has distorted the whole movement, and while it has provided short-term gain, I think it will inevitably provide long-term pain as well.