Am I Progressive? Yup. Am I conservative? Yup.

So I got a couple of really interesting emails today...all of them from offended "conservatives." They asked me why I am calling myself a "Progressive Conservative" on my campaign for "American Candidate." How, they ask, can I be a conservative when I am pro gay-marriage and pro-choice. This is the question I want to be asked again and again, on tv, on radio, on street corners.

I am a conservative American because I am extremely hesitant to tinker with America the idea.:

1) I am a constitutional fundamentalist. It has served as the overarching structure underwhich all of us have lived in liberty for over two centuries. We should leave it alone.

2) I believe in a smaller government with focused, progressive social services.

3) I believe in a balanced budget

4) I believe in free trade, a marginally controlled free market and enlightened capitalism.

5) I believe in states rights

It is a mistake to call the Idealogues that are running the country and the current Republican Party "Conservatives." Given the opportunity, they would conserve little of the America that is envisioned in the Declaration of Independenceand made whole in the US constitution. They would conserve little of the social advances, individual liberties or the social progress of the twentieth century. In fact, Republicans at all levels of government have an aggressive agenda of radical change - criminalize abortion, starve public education to its literal death, amend US and State constitutions to outlaw gay marriage, privatize social security, end welfare, kill affirmative action, roll back environmental protection laws and worker saftey laws, deregulate big business and expand tax protection for the rich and perhaps most disturbing - to end the separation of church and state by declaring the US a Christian Nation.

No, the leaders of the Republican party these days are not conservatives. They are idealogues. Only one thing is for sure when idealogues take control. Their ideas will come first, the means to implement them will come second, the welfare of the people will follow a distant third.

I am progressive because I believe that our understanding of the human condition evolves over time-- That Sexual Orientation may be genetic, for example-- and we must rise to meet those challenges "with malice towards none and charity towards all." Yet, I claim the word "conservative" for those who know the difference between simple tolerance of other religions and true religious liberty, who recognize in the unpopular decision of a state or federal supreme court the beauty of checks and balances, who understand that when the civil liberties of one american are threatened then we are all less free. Is that you? Then you might be conservative, like me.