Conservatism was built on the premise that capitalism, if left to its own devices in some pure unregulated state, would solve humanity's problems. Wrong -- it's a man-made concept and therefore imperfect, and when left to its own devices is as oppressive and inadequate to its citizens' needs as communism.

Conservatism was built on the premise that there is such a thing as a monolithic American culture, primarily WASP, middle-class, educated in the Western European tradition, and that any derivation from that was to be treated as a kind of exotic flavor of the same culture, instead of a legitimate American identity in its own right. Again, wrong -- while the founding fathers may have held such biases themselves, they clearly built a country in which church and state were seperate, immigrants were to be embraced, and there was to be no such thing as a national race, ethinicity, religion or even language.

Conservatism was based on the idea that patriotism meant blind, unquestioning faith in our country's power and superiority, especialy when it came to our miltary posture. Wrong -- history has proven that the people who protested the Vietnam War were in the right, and will prove that those who protested the Iraq War were also right, and that certain actions made during wartime, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII or the treatment of prisoners at Guantonomo, can and must be opposed by citizens of good conscience, and that doing so ultimately makes the country stronger, not weaker.

Conservatism was based on the idea that the way to decrease crime is to have draconian punishment. Wrong -- our current prisons hold the greatest percentage of the adult male population than any other developed country, and yet we are not proportionally safer for doing so.

In other words, conservatism is based on a philosophy of identity, income and so-called "self-reliance" that does not apply to the majority of American citizens. It is not enough to try to make "them" more like "us". It's about growing up and accepting the plurality of this country. Diversity isn't a problem to be solved -- it's a condition to be celebrated and negotiated. Fifty years from now English may not be the dominant language -- so what? Where does it say in the Constitution that it has to be?

Conservatism is intellectually dishonest and has never been anything but an excuse for the people who have profited from the exploitation of others to whine about how they don't get to do that anymore. Boo hoo. Good riddance.