rue, patriotic conservatives was simply those who are cautious about change and who believe in fiscal balance. We have so many examples of such people in he past. Examples from he recent past include John McCain, John Danforth, Charles Percy, Jim Baker, Bob Dole, Everett Dirksen, Howard Baker, Jim Baker, George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Nancy Kassebaum -- all truly patriotic people of integrity, but willing to compromise on details to serve our people and country. Unfortunately, there are few such true patriots among Republican politicians today.

\All other forms of pseudo-conservatism are simply a matter of justifying and attempting to preserve some perceived privilege. That privilege may take any or all of the following forms: social status, above some other group(s), perpetuation of higher income above other groups and/or protection of wealth accumulated from existing privilege, and/or attempts to force specific beliefs and/or values on everyone – even those who do not believe the same.

In the United States, lower income whites proclaim conservatism because they are afraid of being at the bottom of the social heap. To prevent that thy tend to want to create and enforce bias and discrimination on ethnic groups such as Blacks, Hispanics, and recent immigrant groups. And, once they get their share of the American pie, they tend to want to close the door to new immigrant groups, out of fear that they lose some of their recently gained slice. As a group, low-income whites seem oblivious to the fact that programs intended to give all low income people greater opportuni9tyu would benefit them as much or mor than other groups they want to dominate. They simply cannot realize that a rising tie lifts all boats. Their chosen ignorance is truly sad.

Some “conservatives” are simply ethnocentrists. That is , they believe that their white, European-derived culture is superior to others and must be protected. But, peculiarly, they somehow do not believe that their culture can dominate in a free competition of ideas and cultures. Rather they tend to want to protect their culture – and our country – from the pollution of American culture by ideas, beliefs, and pratic3s of other cultures. They attempt to accomplish this by derogation and discrimination. The worst of them are aggressive white nationalists.

Yet another group of “conservatives” are simply greed driven. They want to amass wealth with little sense of obligation and with few, if any, limits. At their worst, they are anarchistic libertarians who (like Ayn Rand did) believe that all governments are bad, hat any attempt to help others is wrong, and that no one has any right to tell them what to do. They simply want to be oligarchs with no boundaries, except those which they alone choose to apply.

\The last group pf pseudo-conservatives are the Christian nationalists. They simply want to control government so that they can force their theological beliefs and values on everyone by enacting them into law. They absolutely do not believe in separation of church and state, but in effect, want to create a theocracy which control. We, the people of the USA do not ant or need a theocracy. What can happen with a theocracy is shown with the example of Iran.