Reply #53: Don't forget "states' rights" and "limited government"...

[Spider Jerusalem]

although they aren't just code-words for racism, although race is certainly some part of it. Right-wingers, or at least the variety we seem to mostly have here in the US, are possessed of a terrible fear of change, and an almost psychotic belief in the American myth of "rugged individualism", leavened with a touch of religious mania. These elements combine to lead to their opposition to the threatening spectre of social progress (gay marriage, decriminalisation of soft drugs, affirmative action, et cetera); a rigid denial of the social functions fulfilled by government, especially in a nation with religious freedom and no established church where many functions of church ought rightly to be fulfilled by the state (welfare being the most important); and a most frightening push towards theocracy based on the fundamentalist Protestant interpretation of Christianity.

Conservatism is, at best, a limited, very narrow, and ultimately quite selfish worldview.