Even as someone who's labeled a conservative - I'm a Republican I'm black, I'm heading up this organization in the Reagan administration - I can say that conservatives don't exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they're welcome.
It wouldn't be fair to say that conservatives cherish property the way liberals cherish equality. But it would be fair to say that the takings clause is the conservatives' recipe for judicial activism just as they say liberals have misused the equal protection clause.
Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives.
Conservatism is, among many other things, a culture. The most important glue binding it together is a shared sense of cultural grievance - the conviction, uniting conservatives high and low, theocratic and plutocratic, neocon and paleocon, that someone, somewhere is looking down their noses at them with a condescending sneer.
The conservative idea is not that government has no role. You might have argued that in the thirties when conservatives opposed the New Deal.
Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.
Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.
Conservatives and companies condoned Rush Limbaugh's 2006 attacks on Michael J. Fox for campaigning about stem cell research.
It's not that conservatives don't care. We do. We just have different answers than liberals do. It's a difference of the mind, not of the heart.
When teachers try to teach, nurses try to nurse, small businesses try to serve their clients and the police try to arrest criminals, there is always a regulator or three breathing down their necks. Conservatives want to make people's lives easier.