Confused conservatism

Modern-day conservatives celebrate small government, lower taxes and personal responsibility. These are people who believe that the government that governs the least is the government that governs the best. They believe in the free market and oppose any kind of regulation. They argue that people should be allowed to make their individual choices, based on their reason to which no government should meddle.

And this is where conservatism is doomed to become contradictory. For an ideology that has metamorphosed into one that, in theory, privileges individual choices, it is now the powerful driver of what has become forms of blatant infringement into the rights of individuals to make choices. Adherents to the conservative ideology vehemently oppose women taking charge of their own bodies and reproduction. They oppose abortion rights. They also deny people the right to choose their own sexual preferences and how to live their lives and pursue happiness. They are against same-sex marriage, even as they frown upon the dissolution even of bad marriages.