GEORGE W. BUSH, EX-CONSERVATIVE?
James Pinkerton explains how conservatives have betrayed their principles and become the party of big government. He makes the same point at more length in the Washington Post. Pinkerton concludes:

So far at least, Republicans and conservatives are cheering this exercise in American "greatness." But they should know that what they are cheering for isn't conservative at all. Instead, it's radical. And radicals are happy to pump up the welfare state, even as they pump up the warfare state.

Well, I agree that conservative is a misnomer for the Republicans today. The neoconservative foreign-policy agenda is certainly radical, revolutionary-- that's what I like about it. But small-government, libertarian, free-market conservatism a la Milton Friedman is also radical, in a long 18th-century tradition. What's more, even theoconservatism, which the press tends to paint as a dreary "moral conservatism," has a radical agenda too: introduce vouchers, allow people to educate their children to God, let Christianity enter the public arena rather than being brushed aside and half-suppressed in the name of "tolerance;" ban abortion, bringing more babies into the world, make divorce more difficult, keeping families together... whether you like or dislike this agenda, you have to recognize that theoconservatives are certainly radical. They want change. And don't forget that this religion they want to raise the profile of is a radically egalitarian one, the religion which preaches that "the meek shall inherit the earth." What's conservative about that?

The Democrats are the real conservatives. They want society to be much the way it was in the 1970s. They look back fondly towards the past, towards Roosevelt and Kennedy, the New Deal and the Great Society.

It's interesting how political labels become obsolete but are hard to replace. The Soviets always considered themselves the ultimate left by definition, yet in late Soviet Russia staunch defenders of the Soviet system came to be labelled the "right," while liberals came to be called the "left," much to the confusion and annoyance of Soviet true believers. Is there some way to re-label our political spectrum?