Democrats are no longer liberal nor progressive anymore.

instead of being actually traditionally conservative, we somehow morphed into conserving classical liberalism.

I'm sure there are instances like you point out, but the overall balance seems to indicate individual liberties are being lost as more and more individuals are being coerced into  fewer options. More permissions are required to pursue happiness. 

Yeah a kid has the freedom to ingest whatever drug the pharmaceutical companies advocate. How about a child's freedom to operate a lemonade stand? Nope, not in Democrat states. How about a Child's freedom to go maskless or helmetless? Nope.

How about a Child's freedom to opt out of public education? Nope.

Well, at least democrats don't take bribes from foreign countries.

For instance, we did have a Republican administration (2 years of which we had majorities in both the House and Senate), yet tech censorship got much worse.

It is a bit reductionist to say, but Republicans in many ways are just "Democrats lite".

When you grow up in a country founded in a violent insurrection in the name of liberty, liberty is the conservative value.

Liberty is worth conserving, it has objective value. Liberty is worth progressing towards, it has objective value

I vote right-tribe because they lie a lot less often and they tend to be wrong in ways that don't destroy civilizations, but if being conservative means favoring the old simply because it is old I will never be a conservative.

 The primary objective is for society to end up as long-term happy and healthy as possible,

When you grow up in a country founded in a violent insurrection in the name of liberty, liberty is the conservative value.

[bmdrocks21] But liberty from what, exactly? It was a war for sovereignty from the UK. I think liberty is to some degree is a conservative value, but it is not to be confused with a libertarian/classical liberal desire to maximize freedom to do whatever one pleases with a few restrictions.

Essentially: libertarianism is not conservative.

Liberty is worth conserving, it has objective value. Liberty is worth progressing towards, it has objective value

[bmdrocks21] "Liberty" is not objectively valuable.

Oxford Dictionary:

Morality - A particular system of values and principles of conduct.

Meriam Webster:

Ethics - a set of moral principles : a theory or system of moral values

Ayn Rand:

Morality - A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

Notes on Definitions:

I will treat ethics and morality as interchangeable, the shades of meaning are irrelevant here. Values vs moral principles are relative indicators. You start from a value and the moral principle is an algorithm which promotes or achieves the value. The moral principle can then be considered a value in of itself and be used for further derivations.

Note that the algorithm is a logical relationship, causality or implication. In order for a moral principle to be correct logic is implicitly relied upon, but that shouldn't be surprising as there is no other way to analyze anything. Human thinking isn't logic and something else, it's either logic or faulty logic.

A very important note about the definition of morality is something it does not contain. It is not a code of behavior that smacks you upside the head if you don't follow it. It's just a code of behavior to promote or achieve values. This is something many many people seem to feel is part of the definition and one of the reasons so many theists constantly think god can be the only source of true morality, because he has the power to smack you if you disobey.

Universe of the Self

A person has values and they are chosen by that person. The human brain, and many other brains are decision engines built to a goal, to live. The human brain, unlike many other brains chooses not only the value of life but secondary values which are perceived to support life. The freedom to choose values is so complete that humans at time choose even to abandon valuing life.

Note, this does not bridge the is-ought gap. There is no reason for values to exist other than that values are what directs the mind to action. There is no need to bridge the is-ought gap, value and morality exist entirely in the world of living organisms. There is no morality for stone and no need to try hopelessly to explain value without the alternative between life and death.

There is one value that precedes all other values for a rational animal, even life. One value which cannot be abandoned because to do so is a contradiction in terms.

That value is self-determination. You cannot choose to disregard your own choice. Every thought or action you will ever hold or take is predicated on your choice and to deny the value of that choice is to deny your own existence.

For every value chosen beyond self-determination and including self-determination there exists a true and correct morality for the individual to follow. The form of that morality is determined by logic and may be as varied as the values held.

The only personal morality which can be said to definitely exist for everyone is that they ought not allow their self-determination to be lost. They should preserve their own liberty.

Universe of the Cognizants

We have individuals with individual moral codes. Subjective moral codes with one exception, self-liberty. Logic can link the objective personal value to others by this dichotomy:

If one chooses to value liberty in abstract, he can without hypocrisy expect others to do the same. If one chooses to value his own liberty while dismissing the liberty of others he must admit that others should do the same.

If it looks like the golden rule it is, or at least a specific implementation of the concept. The golden rule is what separates civilized men from savages.

Still, this is a choice and not one that logic can make for you. The savage who lives by "might makes right" or "the rule of the jungle" is not in contradiction with his values or rationality.

However, when applied to real people it can be seen that such men hardly exist; for if they were honest in their savagery they would have no allies and no way to gain them. Instead they pretend to be civilized men but in their heart value only their own liberty.

The morality that arises from choosing universal liberty is objectively the only other choice to savagery if you define savagery as the decision to not value the liberty of others.

Thus, you cannot objectively say you should behave in X way without knowing someone's values; but once you know someone has chosen to value the liberty of others a great deal follows from that. If they reject valuing the liberty of others and all that follows then either they are in logical error or they are a savage in disguise.

Two principles at the root of two objective solutions to the moral question:

1) The rule of liberty from the value of each's liberty

2) The rule of power from the value of one's own liberty alone

The existence of #2 does not help anyone win any arguments as to why they should not respect liberty. If someone has chosen this morality, you should treat them as they treat you: with violence and deception.

[bmdrocks21] With the lack of rules, structure, and social expectations you have many of the plagues we experience today. While legally allowing people to mutilate their genitals is allowing more freedom, that isn't a desirable freedom to allow.

[bmdrocks21] Freeing people the social stigma of single parenthood and financially subsidizing it might allow people to have more 'freedom' to not get married, but the ills of that are quite apparent in the performance of kids from single parents.

Liberty cannot realistically be an end. It will lead to much suffering if it is treated that way.

You haven't the right to make that choice for others.

Subsidization isn't freedom.

That is revisionism. It wasn't a war for sovereignty, it turned into a demand for sovereignty because that was the only way to get liberty and because there is no point playing for lower stakes when the other side has declared that you must die a traitor's death (something democrats today should remember when they throw around terms like "insurrection").

We each choose our end, and therefore liberty is the beginning, middle, and end. The notion that someone has too much freedom because they made a choice that harmed them in your opinion or even in their own is the tyrant's delusion. The tyrant can use lies and force to control behavior saying he is doing it for their own good but he can never fulfill the values of his victims because all of their values rest upon their self-determination.

What is conservative? What is being conserved if not liberty? And what encroaches against it?

You haven't the right to make that choice for others.

You see, that's the funny part- I do. In a democracy, everyone else and I have the right to make damn near any choice for anyone.

Enough people don't want you doing something? People will get voted in to outlaw it. Oh, it is "unconstitutional"? If enough people are voted in, then they can just amend the Constitution and now its constitutional.

Subsidization isn't freedom.

If you're looking to buy a house and I give you $100k to buy a house, don't you now have more freedom of choice over what house you buy?

That is revisionism. It wasn't a war for sovereignty, it turned into a demand for sovereignty because that was the only way to get liberty and because there is no point playing for lower stakes when the other side has declared that you must die a traitor's death (something democrats today should remember when they throw around terms like "insurrection").

Oh really? We broke off because of "no taxation without representation". In other words, we broke off because we didn't have the power to make the rules that governed us. The definition of sovereignty: "the authority of a state to govern itself or another state." We broke off to gain sovereignty over the colonies.

We each choose our end, and therefore liberty is the beginning, middle, and end. The notion that someone has too much freedom because they made a choice that harmed them in your opinion or even in their own is the tyrant's delusion. The tyrant can use lies and force to control behavior saying he is doing it for their own good but he can never fulfill the values of his victims because all of their values rest upon their self-determination.

We live in a world that is unrecognizable from that under which humans evolved. Rules and structure alter the course of the choices we make. Therefore, liberty alone is not the beginning, middle, and end as you say it is.

What is conservative? What is being conserved if not liberty? And what encroaches against it?

Depends on who you ask.

You see, that's the funny part- I do. In a democracy, everyone else and I have the right to make damn near any choice for anyone.

Prove it.

I see an appeal to force, nothing more. Your unsigned social contracts and your legal fictions won't do a single thing to convince me to obey. The bullets are doing all the convincing. Bullets obey many masters. If you're fine with that there is nothing else to say.

If I leave the gravitational well of the earth don't I have more freedom of choice over where I go?

That is a completely different kind of freedom. To confuse it with political/ethical freedom is equivocation. Political freedom, the freedom that is established by the moral derivation I gave and which is referred to in the definition of proper rights is freedom from the force, threats of force, and equivalent deceptions of other moral actors.

Freedom to live in a nice house is a privilege, earned from nature or given in charity.

No government deserves to exist in of itself. There is no coherent objective moral concept "sovereignty".

If you're just going to ignore the important bits I'll run out of things to say fairly quickly. I didn't just assert it, I proved it. "rules and structure alter the course of the choices we make" has no relevance to my derivation whatsoever. It's just hand waving.

Depends on who you ask.

I was asking you.

You see, that's the funny part- I do. In a democracy, everyone else and I have the right to make damn near any choice for anyone.

Prove it.

How about 'no'. That is literally what a democracy is. Citizens have the right to vote. They vote for people that make laws. Laws restrict what you can do.

I see an appeal to force, nothing more. Your unsigned social contracts and your legal fictions won't do a single thing to convince me to obey. The bullets are doing all the convincing. Bullets obey many masters. If you're fine with that there is nothing else to say.

I'm not making any appeals. I'm simply explaining how the system here in America works.

What you're referring to is negative freedom- what people can't do to you. However, the addition of additional choices is freedom. School choice legislation is freedom- giving parents more power over the destiny of their children. You seem to be suggesting that believe these things are rights. They are not, they are expansions of freedom.

No government deserves to exist in of itself. There is no coherent objective moral concept "sovereignty".

Not much of what you said was wildly incorrect, but this confuses me. Sovereignty isn't a moral concept. It is something people desire and take for themselves because they want power over their destiny. It isn't any crazier than that.

Think of any ex-Colonial country. South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the Ivory Coast countries, etc. Their lives are objectively worse post-colonization, yet they in many cases used violence to achieve the power to govern themselves. They would rather be worse off, in fact, than to be ruled by others and live better. We didn't like the fact that people who didn't listen to us and who had fairly little in common with us were telling us what to do, so we killed their soldiers and economically drained them until they left us alone.

If you're just going to ignore the important bits I'll run out of things to say fairly quickly. I didn't just assert it, I proved it. "rules and structure alter the course of the choices we make" has no relevance to my derivation whatsoever. It's just hand waving.

You can say you proved things all you wish, that doesn't make it true.

You think that having rules is tyranny.

Not at all- it is called having standards.

Depends on who you ask.

I was asking you.

Being a conservative means believing in order above freedom.

It is being part of a long tradition and people. American conservatism specifically has some roots to the Constitution and founding of the country, but those aren't everything.

I suppose you think the Founding of this nation was a bunch of tyrants taking over because they limited the liberty for people to get divorces and bugger each other, yes?

Under every recent modern Democrat administration, individual liberty has been slashed, and the standards of living for the average American have regressed.

Prove me wrong.