It depends on what you mean by "conservative".
If by the term you mean a disillusionment with the power of government to control human behavior, legislate public morality or control economic life, then I can see it. As you get older you tend to see both the inevitablity of some things and the stubborn persistence of others, as well as the eventual corruption of the institutions we put in place to bring about positive change.

Not everything conservatives promote is evil, and much of what passes for conservative thought is little but common sense. But as you get older you also learn that many of those who wish to keep things as they are, or to go back to some earlier, halcyon age which never existed, is strictly self-serving and and designed primarily to preserve the interests of those classes which benefit by being able to promote their own agenda with no consideration for anyone else.

My own dissilusionment with conservative principles is not so much a total rejection of those principles, but the simple observation that those who agitate most vocally for them seem determined to confuse what is best for them personally with what is best for the commonwealth as a whole.

Primates are social creatures with a strong streak of individualism, and these conflicting attributes must be reconciled if we plan to build a society which preserves both individual freedom and opportunity as well as collective prosperity and security. As far as I'm concerned, everything is up for discussion, and neither should long-established practices be considered immune from review.. When people on either right or left start talking to me about "self-evident" or "moral" principles which must lead to specific policy, I instinctively reach back and check my wallet.

When I was a younger man and I observed the evolving nature of the political dialogue about me and I understood it intellectually, but not viscerally. I saw it as just a natural unfolding process. Now that the nation is polarized into warring camps, each reflexively rejecting both the good and the bad about the other, it has crystallized in my mind as a deliberately engineered conflict. I no longer just evaluate a philosophy on its proclaimed priorities, I now look critically at the motives of those who most stridently promote it.
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