con·serve transitive verb  (past con·served, past participle con·served, present participle con·serv·ing, 3rd person present singular con·serves) 1. protect from harm or decay: to keep something, especially an important environmental or cultural resource, from harm, loss, change, or decay the importance of conserving our national heritage 2. use sparingly: to use something sparingly so as not to exhaust supplies some drastic measures to conserve water

What, specifically do "conservatives" want to conserve?  Our treasure, our blood, our history?  Our rights, our values, our freedoms? Our forests, our rivers, our air?  Our compassion, our honor, our dignity?

We are allowing ourselves to be dumbed down, to allow the ambitions of the basest, the greediest, the most vicious, the most ruthless and dishonest among us to lead us over a cliff, into an abyss.  I remember as a young boy in Japan that I kept a fake parchment copy of the Bill of Rights taped to the bunk over my bed, so it was the first and last thing I saw every day.  America was a dream to me then, my Home, the home of Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, the hope and dream of freedom-loving people the world over, a place of justice, of honor, a place where any person of merit and integrity could rise to any position, a place free of the crippling constraints of fading aristocracies. Where nobility meant personal nobility, not the empty nobility of monarchs and courtiers, and the schemers around a corrupt and thieving throne. A Democracy, a Republic.  That America was always a dream, of course, but it was a common dream, and people the world over believed in it.  It gets harder and harder every day to maintain that belief.

What are the "conservatives" trying to conserve?  I can't see it. 

David