The basis of American Conservatism rests in the hallmarks of limited government. The United States was born of distrust of taxation and central power. The fraud that was Britain, that still had two hundred years more to run in the full flower of its humanitarian facade, was the outward lie of its claim that it stood for law and freedom as it piled its plunder in Scrooge-like counting houses and denied the humanity of every race but their own.

In the latter stages of the 20th century the United States found itself a full-fledged success story. Her general living standards amongst the highest of equally massive nations (smaller nations owned better standards, but these forever had less variables to assuage), she stood at the pinnacle of her power. Her former enemies were cowed. Her affiliates well satisfied. Her long-ago master nothing more than her 51st state.

But in exchange for this ravenous glory every last principle that urged the patriots of 1776 into covenants and conspiracies against a world power they had no business beating was betrayed. The plain and simple truth is the legacy of American Conservatism has been sublimated by a spiteful, hate-filled, jingoistic, brutal authoritarianism that replaces principle with politics and liberty with subservience.

And at the forefront of this treason to conservative principles - and America itself - smirks the Republican Party and the Neocon Philosophers who happily spin the dials behind the talking robots and shills that pass for patriots in an age bereft of American Memory beyond what bombs may do and imperious brats may pronounce despite all reason and the proofs of history.

It isn't a matter of "Conservatives," for they hardly exist in truth any more. We see, at the apex of this supremacy a relatively new creature - the Neocon.

How to explain?

The single most glaring difference between "Conservatives" and "Neocons" was explained in an article published in the Christian Science Monitor titled "Neocon 101".

Simply put, "Today, both conservatives and neocons favor a robust US military. But most conservatives express greater reservations about military intervention and so-called nation building. Neocons share no such reluctance."

Indeed, it is an effort to remake the world in their image - a parallel vision to the British Empire, complete with the facade of democracy. Presumably a democracy that was allowed to live unaffected by the Neocon strongarm only so long as the voting doesn't turn in favor of Islamic Fundamentalists who dismantle the young republic because that was the will of the people voting.

All empires shatter. It is an immutable law of human nature. No conqueror can sustain it, and no "good intention" can sugarcoat it.

And now that the intelligence community has said there are no WMDs in Iraq, the neocons are quite willing to substitute altruism for weapons of mass destruction as the central mission of the invasion - as if those weapons never bothered them. Never worried them. They didn't make an issue out of weapons of mass destruction - everybody else did! They went in to help the poor downtrodden victims of Saddam's brutal regime. They went in to bring the blessings of democracy. The benefits of white man's wisdom in the world.

It is of no consequence to them that "altruism" and their claims to have been influenced by Ayn Rand can't possibly co-exist without epistemological gymnastics the scope of which have been heretofore unimaginable in the history of knowledge. Haven't you been paying attention? Up is down. Black is white. Conservatism is big-government, and the American Idea is all about marching in lock step with a central authority.