Jay Reding ties together several different sources into the perfect explanation of conservatism. And why the left consistently can’t figure it out.

Conservatism isn’t some monolithic bloc of like-minded individuals, it’s a diverse marketplace of ideas based upon a few shared precepts build upon a foundation of ideas that stretches back for centuries. The terms “liberal” and “conservative” don’t even remotely match their dictionary definition anymore  they haven’t at least since 1968 and quite likely since the New Deal. The political realignment of 1968 brought a massive change to the American ideological spectrum. The 1960s produced the radical left as the former hawks of the Democratic Party became today’s neoconservatives. The right coalesced around the national security issue – first based on their stance on the Cold War, and now on the fight against Islamofascism. As the liberalism of the Johnson and Carter Administrations produced economic malaise and a loss of national pride, the conservative movement, led by Ronald Reagan, was there to provide the kind of leadership that America had been lacking. It is quite telling that the only truly successful Democratic politician on the national level, Bill Clinton, won not as an outright liberal but as a “new Democrat” who used the politics of triangulation and his own ineffable personal charisma to outflank the Republicans on the right. Since 1980, no outright and unabashed liberal has been able to win an American election. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry all failed while running on a platform of liberal populism.

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