Fareed Zakaria of Time has a very good article on how being a conservative in America has changed:
Full article here:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2077943,00.html#ixzz1PRckoY00
"Conservatism is true." That's what George Will told me when I interviewed him as an eager student many years ago. His formulation might have been a touch arrogant, but Will's basic point was intelligent. Conservatism, he explained, was rooted in reality. Unlike the abstract theories of Marxism and socialism, it started not from an imagined society but from the world as it actually exists. From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, the greatest conservative thinkers have said that to change societies, one must understand them, accept them as they are and help them evolve.
Watching this election campaign, one wonders what has happened to that tradition. Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past. This is a tragedy, because conservatism has an important role to play in modernizing the U.S.
Full article here:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2077943,00.html#ixzz1PRckoY00