Fantasy is easier to sell than truth -- in the short term

To the Liberal Democrat, history is always in the midst of an incomplete progression toward a utopian end.  History is a story with a happy ending and we are all always making progress through that story.  In the fullness of time, with occasional and minor setbacks caused by ignorance, we will achieve, in the Liberal view, a society where all needs are met equally for everyone, where there is no lack and no unfairness.  In the end our long struggle will bring into existence the kind of perfect society humans have been fighting for and dreaming of forever. 

To the conservative, there is no perfect society but the United States of American pretty much is about as close as we’re going to get to the society humans have been fighting for and dreaming of forever.  The culture and economic success of the United States of America are precious and unique achievements that must be protected from destruction by those who do not understand what makes them precious and unique.  Two of the most important characteristics of this culture are individual freedom and opportunity.  To the extent we can use new tools and theories to better secure these or to improve our lives in other ways, we should, but above all else we should safeguard this unique American life. 

To accomplish Liberal goals it is important to keep expanding, in George Will's phrase, "the network of dependency" (on government) and essentially keep voting new gifts to people while taking a larger and larger share of money away from the people who, in an above average way, contribute to and earn money from the economy.

To accomplish Conservative goals we need to above all prevent anyone with bad ideas from messing up the system.  And secondly, we need to make things even better where we can without messing up the underlying goodness.

It is harder to get people to vote for a Conservative platform because it is, obviously, not as full of goodies.

Now, that said, Conservatism does have certain advantages.  The main advantage of Conservative policies is that they work.  The qualities of individual opportunity and liberty are so psychologically important to humans that when you remove them from a society, things tend to go quite poorly but when you design an economy and political system taking them into account, things can go quite well. 

I hope we can make this case well enough that we don't need to learn the lessons of Liberalism and of the late 1970s again the hard way.