True conservatives believe in using incentives to help and motivate people, incentives that work.

It's actually been a sad 30 years or so for me, seeing the GOP taken over slowly and surely by kooks of various sorts.

Barry Goldwater warned against it. He and Buckley kicked the Birchers out, now they're part of the base. Goldwater warned about letting the religious right in there.  True conservatism believes in separation of church and state.

That's all gone now, there's no there anymore. It's just a collection of fringe groups banded together by a common paranoia that the right wing media feeds them.

The right in this country is not conservative, far from it. It's become doctrinarian and authoritarian in nature. Everything is shaped, including the facts by ideology.

True conservatives are practical people. While they want a smaller government, they want what they pay for to work. Today's right doesn't want government to work at all.

True conservatives believe in using incentives to help and motivate people, incentives that work.

True conservatives accepted for the most part, Keynesian Economics in the 50's and 60's. They never opposed the government helping people during times of economic crisis.

True conservatives founded the conservation movement, which begat today's environmental movement.  Conservation and Conservative both come from the Latin, to conserve.

It is sad looking at what happened not to mention deal with it.