For years, the Left has served to demonize the Right with simplistic stereotypes of what conservatives believe. When they aren't calling us racists (despite the fact that the Democrats are the party of Jim Crow) or Nazis, they say things very similar to what you wrote:

What I think: The conservative talking points all along have been, in politics, "My Country Right or Wrong", and in economics, "Every Man for Himself". These are very simple and easy to understand. That's helpful in Soundbiteland.



Those simplistic straw men are easy to refute.

Regarding the first one, "My Country Right or Wrong", no sincere person would say such a thing. The best refutation to that was by Gilbert K. Chesterton when he said; 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

When our country is wrong, then it is our responsibility to speak up about it. Conservatives have been critical of many things for years, so that flies in the face of any "My Country Right or Wrong" claim. After all, the first step in solving any problem is admitting it exists. Adapting a "My Country Right or Wrong" stance would prohibit acknowledging any problems exist much less fixing problems, such as slavery, the Jim Crow laws enacted by Democrats across the South, the imprisonment of people of Japanese ancestry during WWII (again by Democrats), and a host of other problems. For the record, a good friend of mine was thrown into those camps along with his family in 1942. He was two years old. What kind of government imprisons two year olds, even in time of war?

As for "Every Man for Himself", I don't know of any conservatives who adapt that opinion, either. Where conservatives differ most strongly from the Left is the role of government in solving problems. By and large, the Left seems to have the mindset of "a program for every problem", with the government being in charge of the program, of course. This despite a track record of failed government programs going back for decades.

Conservatives look first to non-governmental solutions for most problems. One reason is that government is horribly inefficient at helping people. I remember congressional testimony on CSPAN several years ago that stated roughly 80% of all government spending on poverty programs goes to administrative overhead. The testimony further claimed that if the number of families who received assistance divided the amount of money being spent on federal poverty programs, it'd average $50,000 per family per year. However, with most of that being absorbed by the overhead, not much help was actually making it to the poor.

Economics is sometimes called the dismal science because it forces us to look at things like true costs verses benefits. There are essentially unlimited wants chasing limited resources, so efficiency is more than a mere academic exercise.

Most conservatives I know believe that we're no better than the poor. Indeed, many of us (including myself) started out poor. We believe it's better to help the poor lift themselves out of poverty than to merely hand them benefits for the rest of their lives. As the cliché goes, the "safety net" was never intended to be a hammock.