Americans do not know, really, what conservatism is.
Why?
Because they never ever had it here.
One explanation is that they never had anything much politically to conserve.
They had repudiated the possible sources of conservatism at the founding, except perhaps for a radical Whig lower gentry ideal. I do not consider this enough conservatism, really, to matter, in the larger scheme of things. It was more or less mainly ignorant anarchic rural superstition.
If you want to call that American conservatism, fine; that is more or less what it still is, and all it is, but with many right wing city dwellers now in a similar benighted state added to it.
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