The conservative virtues of self-reliance, small government, accepting and expecting personal responsibility, free enterprise,
robust limits to regulation and taxation, and all the rest, are not to be condemned.

It's the grotesque exaggeration of these virtues and their perverse mis-application to every aspect of life and government that we see in the political manifestation of contemporary conservative thought that is malignant and pathological. And as you point out, this new conservatism is merely a thinly disguised cover for naked self-interest, racism, classism, nativism, militarism and religious fundamentalism, all cloaked in the Flag, God, and the Founding Fathers for legitimacy.

These new conservatives deftly cast every objection by their critics to their outrages as equivalent to an outright rejection of those self-evident virtues I listed above. We must not let them get away with it.

They shouldn't be called conservatives, they should have a name all their own.

And no, I'm not trying to start an argument or debate with them. I already know what their opinions and beliefs are. I just want to be sure they know where I stand.