What is it that "Conservatives" want to conserve? It is a suspiciously strange name for a political movement. I say that because it seems to me that everyone wants to conserve something. So "Conservativism" really doesn't distinguish any particular group. For example, I assume that liberals want to conserve liberal values. Members of the Green Party want to conserve certain environmental values.

The fact is that only certain people do call themselves "Conservatives." But who are these people and what are they trying to conserve? Sometimes it seems to me that they merely want to dig their feet into the ground and resist change of any kind. Conserve the status quo. If that's true, it's a very negative political movement and quite ill defined since "the status quo" is always something different.

In recent times, conservative Republicans have rather successfully convinced the nation that they are the ones who want to conserve moral values. Evidently, in their minds, Liberals have no moral values and only want to destroy theirs. I don't understand how they have gotten away with this farce, nor do I understand why Liberals are so shy about expressing their positive values, values which they have tried to defend and conserve for the last forty years in the face of constant Republican attack.