Wrong answers. Big business equates to oppression- trade is restricted because a few companies dominate the market and consumer choice suffers accordingly. It also leads to a wider gulf between rich and poor- meaning societal cohesion threatened. Above all a conservative, in the tradition of Edmund Burke, is opposed to social upheaval. They do not support pure laissez faire capitalism; they want enough government regulation of the economy to maintain fair market competition. Above all conservatives oppose the concentration of power. They want to regulate the rich so the rich cannot oppress the poor due to their money and they want to regulate the poor so they cannot rob the rich due to their number.
Abortion?
Sodomy?
Prostitution?
Adultery?
Drug use?
Insider trading?
It sounds like you are a libertarian, not a conservative.
What reason do we have to promote democracy in Iraq as opposed to promoting democracy in places like Rwanda or South Africa or Haiti or North Korea?
Individual responsibility for society as a whole is also a hallmark of conservatism- as a bulwark against social upheaval. By and large America was founded on the basis of joint community action- barn raisings and husking bees were the norm rather than the exception.
A classical liberal is a conservative by today's standards. I see little difference between them. I do, however, see a large difference between a conservative and a libertarian. Libertarians believe we can still live in a state of nature, i.e., no government. But the last time humans lived in a state of nature, Cain killed his brother. Conservatives, on the other hand, understand human nature and they know that human nature makes government necessary.
Conservatism has no place for the absolute liberty that libertarians call for. No conservative is totally free to do as he pleases. Conservatives have an individual and corporate obligation to their God, their family and their country. As Edmund Burke commented: "...Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights?"
Libertarians are Burke's escaped madmen, highwaymen and murderers.
Furthermore, Conservatives see an essential role for government in regulating liberty that has to be fettered for the sake of the commonweal. Again Burke: "I should, therefore, suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France until I was informed how it had been combined with government, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue, with morality and religion, with the solidity of property, with peace and order, with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too, and without them liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints."
And note what Alexander Hamilton, the quintessential American Conservative said, “Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.”
