But if George Will can just redefine "conservatism" as American libertarianism, it's just a semantic game. He can say Christianity is part of the Old World throne-and-altar variety. Of course, I'm trying to give the big picture in this series of articles, one that sees through these cheap labels.

I make a similar point about the rationalizing opportunism of true conservatives, in my upcoming article on Russell Kirk, in which I think I hammer the point home.

That's an interesting point about the sequence of goods in the Constitution, although presumably Will would say there's no intended value hierarchy in that paragraph They could all be equally valuable in creating "a more perfect union."