Being enamored of the way things were when you were young does not make you conservative; it makes you nostalgic.
Protesting one's conservatism has very little meaning if the substance of your protest is nostalgia and self-appellation.
Similarly, if the entirety of one's conservatism is a single policy stance, coupled with a congenital resistance to change, this merely makes one idiosyncratically intransigent.
If that single policy stance is muscular opposition to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, then most charitably, one is not very good at keeping up on the news.
There is no checklist for conservatism; however, if one finds oneself broadly in agreement on economic, social, fiscal, and foreign policy grounds with the left, one is probably not conservative.
If one's views change constantly in reaction to whoever holds the Imperial seat at 1600 Pennsylvania, one is neither conservative nor liberal, but merely an idiot.
