Reddit reviews The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America

Well you have some reading to do.

Here's a decent book.

Then maybe Conscience of a Conservative by none other than Mr. Barry Goldwater.

Then the complete Federalist Papers.

God and Man at Yale by good old Bill Buckley.

Read the National Review.

Conservatism (at least in my own ignorant opinion) is the idea that social structures develop and contain an enormous amount of value which should not be thrown away lightly.

Combine that with personal autonomy, allowing markets to exist with as minimal amount of regulation as possible to prevent fraud and abuse.

Then a certain moral conservatism which is very hard to define. Be good, don't resort to violence, respect long standing institutions especially the family.

But overall I think it is simply opposing radical change of all types. Tinker around the edges to improve society but don't overturn the apple cart. This is the difference between Nazi Germany and American conservatives. Hitler demanded radical changes that would fundamentally change everything about German government while Conservatives would absolutely abhor his rise to power. American conservatives basically say "oh, we should probably not change everything all at once for no reason."

Just watch Buckley on Firing Line.

I could go on about this forever. There is no real simple answer and even conservatives radically disagree amongst themselves.

If anyone wants to read more in depth on this, there's a great book called The Right Nation that came out about 10 years ago written by two British writers from The Economist (hardly a liberal rag) that tracks the GOP since Goldwater, and the answer is, well, yes. I haven't read it since it came out, but I think it would be even more telling now than it was then.

Sure, but not all countries and cultures work the same. Most of your specific anti-socialists are in the US. I'm one of them. Having a refuge for laissez-faire capitalism is a good thing in my opinion. Moreover, America is a country that believes that if a little is good, a lot is better. It's the same issue I have with gun control. Other countries can take the guns out of the hands of citizens and trust the government to not exploit that. We don't, because we know that if we were in power, we would exploit it. It's the same issue with free speech. In France or Australia, you can make a law to ban offensive speech, and that's as far as it will go. In America, if you pass a law to ban, say, holocaust denial, people will use that as a precedent to ban any unpopular opinion.

Bottom line is that culture is a real thing, and that even though America and other countries share similar economies, we have a different culture. If you have the time, here's a good (and even-handed) book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/The-Right-Nation-Conservative-America/dp/0143035398