Conservative as a description of a particular world-view is only partly useful. Conservative as a description of a particular set of policy views is even less useful. From 2000-2008 self-attributed conservatives favored 1) large deficits 2) increased federal spending 3) a larger welfare state (at least for some-Medicare pt. D) 4) roll-backs of civil liberties 5) drone strikes 6) etc. etc.. By the time the last network called the 2008 election results, what it meant to be a conservative had changed completely and conservatives, with some exceptions, believed almost the opposite of their previous beliefs.

This wasn’t a gradual change representing a multi-year political alignment, it happened nearly instantaneously. We should stop pretending that being “conservative” refers to a set of personallly-held beliefs about policy. Instead, we should conceptualize “conservative” as a self-attributed term of individuals held together by social bonds that extend across ethnic, cultural, geographic and style of life bonds. Its more about identity for both groups and individuals than it is any coherent ideas about policy or the role of government.

I’m not sure if the same could be said for the term “liberal”. Maybe similar observations could be drawn, but my sense is that “liberal” as a unifying identity for a body of people is not nearly as salient as “conservative”.

It is remarkable how often history is ahistorically invoked.

In spite of Hegel, Spann contends, Marx remained thoroughly individualist. In his theory of the State he is individualistic to the point of anarchist Utopianism. “That in Marxism the ‘State dies off’ is the outcome of its inherent Individualism which regards society as being, essentially, lack of domination of human beings by human beings, a ‘free association’ of individuals.” The Socialist ideal is definitely the “Statefree” society. Historically, it is by way of Democracy and Liberalism that Individualism leads to Bolshevism. The “barbaric, brutal, and bloody” rule of Liberal Capitalism, as Spann himself terms it, prepares the way for a Socialist organisation of economic life, a transition for which representative Democracy supplies the political machinery. Once we allow the universalist principle of medieval society to be finally destroyed by the individualistic virus, no other outcome is possible.

But within the party system, the mainstream left and right both rely heavily on the funding and support of their most powerful constituencies and cannot afford to offend them too greatly. In a society where bourgeois industrialists dominate the ruling class, a mainstream right-wing party is not going to have much choice but to pay lip service to their sustaining ideology, which is economic liberalism. This doesn’t mean that the more anti-market factions are insincere, but the nature of the beast prevents them from having much influence under normal circumstances.

[or, conservatives are always socially conservative, it's just that sometimes the society they're conserving is based on market practices and sometimes it isn't.]

One interpretation of this tension is that it is the natural dynamic that arises in a democratic coalition of a political leadership oriented to dominance (i.e. the market conservatives, in your terms) with those authoritarian followers, who are easily demagogued and who model conventional morality (i.e. the social conservatives).

This alliance, if you can call it that, is a response to a need to mobilize numbers approaching half the population. So, the conservative core, who want to dominate for their own gain, have to modify their doctrines and apologia to attract the loyalty of other, more numerous groups, and the easiest ones to appeal to, are usually the easily demagogued authoritarian followers. Mobilizing the authoritarian followers entails various kinds of appeals, which will be historically circumstantial.

It seems to me that the desire for social dominance is the constant core of conservative ideologies; it basically amounts to the desire to establish an hereditary aristocracy. The demagoguery, traditionalism and conventional morality, employed to bring along as supporters, people, whose political psychology inclines them to be authoritarian followers, vary with historical and cultural context.

Of course, we make this mistake because as a society we’re encouraged to do so, a coherent philosophy lends authority to a political party – and also can usefully obscure the influence of sectional interests.

The second problem is to accept the notion that there is anything much coherent in the philosophy of “conservatism” over the waves of history. This is unlikely because each era was trying to conserve something different… Many conservative voters in the US would like to return to the 1950s. Many conservative donors in the US would actually rather return to the 1850s. (Sectional interests again.) Pretending this grab bag makes sense isn’t necessarily useful.

Example: no one, to my knowledge, defends the FDA’s rabbit inspectors — those guy who run around slapping fines on magicians who use live rabbits in their performances. Yet the Democrats have been as unable as the Republican to end this kind of craziness.

Another example: the TSA’s bureaucratic rules are so crazy and so universally recognized as pointless and self-destructive (pat-downs of 6-year-olds, pointless bans on liquids in amounts over 6 oz., ad infinitum) that both Democrats and Republicans agree the TSA’s regulations are completely counterproductive and time-wasting. Yet neither party can seem to shut down these crazy regulations.

In fact, conservatives today seem to love crazy regulations and byzantine bureaucracies — as long as they’re military or national-security based. The Pentagon has never passed an audit, although it’s required to by law. Oddly, this seems not to bother contemporary conservatives. Waste and crazy baroque regulations are wonderful…as long as they take place on the military/national security side of the fence.

I give up – what’s the answer?

Also, what’s the question?

French infrastructure was not particularly bad. French roads were maintained by corvée, a system of unfree, unpaid labor imposed on those of lower social status. It was oppressive and deeply resented, and transmuting this feudal obligation into a money tax was frequently among the objects of reform, but, if the criteria is the quality of road maintenance, it seems to have worked. English travellers to the Île-de-France in the years leading up to the Revolution remarked on the good condition of roads, compared to England. The French revived corvée a couple of times in the course of the 19th century; it didn’t finally go down for good and all, I believe, until the advent of the Third Republic.

The American Revolution was won because the French Navy was superior at the time to the British Navy in every respect. When the French wanted to spend the money, they had no trouble achieving results, even through the decrepit apparatus of the French state, which was not, entirely, decrepit. The bureaucracy of Intendants, ruling their généralités, providing police and general services, under the supervision of the Comptroller, were understaffed, but vigorous.

The acute problem areas were French agriculture and French money and finance. French agriculture lagged visibly behind the British, where an agricultural revolution in the 18th century had fed unprecedented population growth. The poor harvests of the 1780s put the country on the verge of famine, and no one among the philosophes and physiocrats had any idea what to do. France did not have a central bank or a banking system or fiat money, or a competent fiscal regime to collect taxes. The judicial system was a mess, with a huge number of courts administering a complex set of traditional customs and privileges. (Ironically, the Revolution would be carried out by lawyers, of which France had huge numbers). Real property transactions were burdened by ancient feudal dues and obligations. Paris bankers were foreigners, Swiss or Dutch. Much of tax collection was privatized by a consortium, operating according to obnoxious methods. Financial expediences magnified the burden of debt service, but the generally poor quality of French banking and finance contributed the general dysfunction of the economy.

Britain, by contrast, had the Bank of England. The superior British banking and financial system did more than secure the state a much lower burden of debt service and eliminated the threat of public fiscal insolvency. It also motivated effective organization of British agriculture and the first canal boom and the beginnings of the industrial revolution.

It is a nice catch that worship of the market has a long history in conservatism. It’s just not the only strain.

Indeed more than a few self styled liberals become downright “conservative” by your definition when its suggested that their particular slant on an economic, social or political topic may not be quite as good for everyone as they might imagine.