Conservative litmus test

Steve Brenneis responds to Robert W. Mitchell, Jr.:

Ironically enough, the only true litmus test for conservatives is that no litmus test applies to them.

Those of us who are self-defined conservatives favor individualism above all other factors. Today's left wants individualism to vanish. Today's left wants everyone treated identically. As Ayn Rand once said, today's left, supposedly the defenders of minorities, ignore the rights of the smallest minority in the world: the individual.

George Bush's supporters and detractors alike call him a conservative. He is no more a conservative than Bill Clinton was. He is a big-government liberal who happens to have a hawkish world view. There are plenty of those around. Conservatives are dedicated to the principles of limited government. Bush has grown the government bigger, farther, faster than any President in American history. Conservatives are dedicated to the destruction of the redistributionist state. Bush has firmly ensconced redistributionism in the political landscape for as far as the eye can see. Conservatives are dedicated to restoring Constitutional government as envisioned by the founders. Bush has strayed farther afield and pushed the limits of Federalism further than any of his predecessors, Republican or Democrat.

Liberal and conservative are deceitful and transitory terms anyway. I am about 90% libertarian. In eighteenth century parlance that makes me a classic liberal. In twenty-first century parlance it makes me a raging right-wing kook.

Where's the litmus test in that?