There is a great problem today with the general public understanding Conservative values. They don't seem to understand the true definition of Conservatism. And, today's Republican Party is certainly not helping the matter any, for one is hard-pressed to find a Reagan Conservative these days--at least amongst politicians.
Up until 1964, former President Reagan, one of the greatest Presidents we have ever seen in this nation, was a Democrat. This is not as surprising as it may seem to many people today. Ronald Reagan had been in radio and in Hollywood before he discovered his true calling of politics (he became the governor of California from 1967 through 1975). We who have values today know that the mental disease known as liberalism has long since infested Hollywood and the mass media. Reagan in his younger years was obviously influenced by this trend amongst those within his profession. But, he was a man of strong intelligence, and eventually he started to check the facts. And the facts about how his nation was being run disturbed him so deeply that he couldn't remain on the side of the Democrats, and he became a Republican, although he still insisted throughout his political life that Americans' issues were beyond those of "left" and "right". His Liberal Democrat opponents never got tired of mocking this idea of his, and they aren't tired of mocking it now even more than four years after his death.
CONSERVATIVE VALUES VS LIBERAL AND OTHER VALUES
Frankly, let's be real. Conservative values are better because they work. Conservative values are about resisting any urges to make too-rapid changes, essentially. Conservative values might be better described as "classical" or "neoclassical" values. And this could be summed up by a couplet from the great Neoclassical poem "Essay on Man" by Alexander Pope: "Be not the first by which the new is tried, Nor the last to set the old aside."
