its hard to think about it from the outside, when it is part of your life..
Conservatism in most senses relates back to the original traditions and philosophies that we say our nation was founded upon. Today in America a conservative holds most dear the traditions of our new republic because he thinks that our founding system and structure happen to be the best way to organize a government, and ultimately sustain a people.
This founding, in a structural sense, had a great deal to do with the social contract, which bound the citizen to the governing 'triumvirate' system. The crux of this system is the interweaving of power between the branches, and the inter-dependency given them all. A very treasured after-thought of the signing of our constitution is the bill of rights. Conservatives hold very sacred this document, as it is an insurance policy against any undesired growth in the power of the ruling body. A conservative heartily believes in the integrity of the system, but not in the heart of the members. Since our nation was founded on the belief by some men that we aught to be free to rule over ourselves, we overthrew an oppressive government and took on that one self-evident liberty of autocracy. For this very reason, conservatives react very negatively at the hinting of another government body meddling too greatly into the lives of the people. It is a sort of reminder of the initial motivation for the revolution. The colonists were very self-reliant, and for this reason the tradition remains within conservatism that the citizenry is capable and an overbearing government is unnecessary.
the actual definition for the well-being of the citizen can be somewhat ambiguous, but what matters most to a conservative is that that citizen reaches it himself. Equality becomes an important issue insomuch that each member of the society has equal access to attain what his/her well-being might be; and since this is decided by the citizens themselves, only they should have that power and authority.
this may seem like incoherent ramblings, but I hope to soon draw some funny dichotomies from all of this mess.... so stay tuned!! (boy was that cheesy :/)
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