The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

“He's not a bomb-thrower. He cares about other people's points of view, ... In the hearings, we learned exactly what we wanted to learn about Roberts. He's judicious ... Bush stepped up in picking Roberts. He picked someone who was going to be a judicial conservative, not an injudicial conservative.”

“At the moment, McCain fits the bill of the type of candidate Republicans are looking for, in light of what's happening to the Bush presidency. He can be a conservative Republican to conservative Republicans, he can be more moderate to independent voters, because of the straight-talk aspect. He fits the profile of what different voters want.”

“Now it is virtually impossible for a vocal conservative to be hired for a tenure-track position on a faculty anywhere, or to receive tenure if so hired. The conservative faculty members I encounter who have achieved this feat, invariably tell me that they were forced to keep their political orientation to themselves until they achieved tenure.”

There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.

“[t]he Republican takeover -- which is to say, political success -- dealt the mortal blow. Conservative institutions, conceived for combat, have in power become self-perpetuating, churning their direct-mail lists in pursuit of cash. . . . The current story of Jack Abramoff's lucrative self-dealing, involving as it does such movement stalwarts as Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, may seem lunatic in its excesses, but . . . [t]he point is the ease with which the stalwarts commandeered the greasy machinery of Washington power. Conservative activists came to Washington to do good and stayed to do well. The grease rubbed off, too.”

“There are an awful lot of cases in which O'Connor was the fifth justice in a liberal direction even though she basically had a fairly conservative record. That is why liberals are so particularly worried because replacing her with somebody who is fairly conservative could put a lot of those 5-4 rulings in jeopardy.”

“Women candidates in Afghanistan are courageously defying the Taliban, warlords, and conservative social norms that exclude them from public life.”

“Quite frankly I think (Myrick Co. is) being pretty conservative with their estimates. It could be worth even more than that.”

“It's pretty conservative, but I think it's also realistic given the turmoil and the troubles present here in North America.”