Who is a Real Conservative?

Reagan Wasn’t the Conservative He’s Made Out to Be
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-06-13/trump-is-the-conservative-that-reagan-wasn-t
The real aberration in the American conservative tradition is not Donald Trump, but the predecessor with whom he is often compared.

William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Invention of American Conservatism
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/02/buckley-sam-tanenhaus-book-review
A new biography traces the ascent of a man who made the postwar right at once urbane, combative, and camera-ready.

 
George Will’s interesting essay: Is the individual obsolete?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/opinions/george-will-is-the-individual-obsolete/
The more educated a nation becomes, the wealthier it is apt to become, and the wealthier it becomes, the more benefits its government can dispense to the citizenry. The wealthier the citizens become, the more they pay in taxes, and the more benefits they expect from government. So, although prosperity makes people confident and assertive, and gives them the means to be self-sufficient, it is not conducive to small government or to self-sufficiency. So perhaps democratic life undermines the prerequisites of democracy. It produces first a toleration of dependency, then a hunger for it, and finally an insistence that dependency is a fundamental right.