The world is not conservative.

I respect real conservatives, although they baffle me. Conservatives intensely dislike something basic about human society: complexity. People are complex and contradictory. Many conservatives are smart enough to know this. Still, the overriding theme of so much conservatism is - The answers are simple if you will only listen to us. Examples:

"No matter what lower taxes are always better." Not true. Higher taxes and rationing helped defeat Hitler.

"Nuclear families are the perfect human condition." No evidence for this either. Most of human history consisted of extended families and - dare I say it - villages functioning as the basic unit of society.

"They hate us because of our freedom." Wrong. "They", for the most part don't hate "us" at all. Those who do us harm hate us largely because of what we do. What we do and why we do it is complex indeed. There is a fierce desire on the Right to ignore the American government's behavior overseas - both good and bad behavior. If we do it, it must be right is the mantra. I happen to believe that much of what the American government does overseas is right. However, I will not ignore the history of American influence in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia when looking at 9/11. There are no excuses. But there are reasons.

"Secure the borders" - fair enough. But we must not take the price of lettuce, or the history of the southern border, or the complexity of world economics, or -God forbid - the humanity of the "illegals" who risk so much to get here into account.

The list of simple conservative responses to complex social problems goes on and on. We cannot go back to the fantasy American year of 1955 for one reason. There never was a 1955 that existed as it does in the conservative mind. It is a delusion.

American society is a progressive venture. It is full of fits and starts and shames and triumphs. But the essence is forward MOVEMENT. And forward movement is what modern conservatives hate the most.

So conservatives win battle after battle and never win the war. George W. Bush is not a conservative - so I do not include him in this assessment. As American Presidents go he is something new for us: a true reactionary. How and if we get through this era in tact as a constitutional democracy remains to be seen. If we do both true conservatives and true liberals will have a lot of work to do.