I think the original poster meant neo-conservatives.

I have always considered myself a conservative because I embraced the ideals set forth in the US Constitution of freedom for all. I believe that a person's freedom should only end where it starts to infringe upon anothers freedom (such as your freedom to not have your pencil stolen).

Somehow in the 20th century we started to lose the idea that freedoms are a given. We started down the road to goverment protecting us not from outside threats but from ourselves. Prohibition was considered such a huge curtailment of freedom that it required an amendment to the constitution. After prohibition was repealed and some of the same people decided to set their sites on drugs they had to create a stamp tax for the drug and then not sell the stamp to anyone. The crime was actually tax fraud, because obviously you could not directly legislat what people can put into there own body without an amendment to the constitution.

Fastforward to later in the century and all of a sudden its a okay to tell people what they can and cannot put into their own body. And this idea was not just with those whacked out liberal dems, the supposedly conservative republicans backed it to the hilt. It was even a republican administration that put forth the idea of a "War on Drugs", a logical absurdity.

Since the end of the cold war things have only gotten worse. Since politicians are no longer contrasting themselves against the commie hoards, it is now considered ok to make people present there papers or else go to jail. I'm not even talking about at an airport. The Supreme's have upheald that if the police question you and you refuse to provide id they can arrest you. This means that in the USA the police can now say "Your papers please, comrade," and if you don't pony them up you go to jail.

Okay, that was quite a rant. Sadly there is still more bile screaming to get out about the erosion of civil liberties in this country. I will leave it with this, you can not trust a persons self imposed labels to tell you their true feelings on issues. If you could the Bush admin. would support Oregan's right to allow euthanasia and California's right to legalize pot for medical purposes.