This magazine, as I understand it, is devoted to a project of redefining what Americans think it means to be a conservative, specifically arguing that it is more properly conservative to exercise restraint in foreign affairs (potentially even to oppose interventionism on principle) than to try to preserve hegemony, and that it is more properly conservative to nurture local economies and cultures (potentially even ones an individual might find baffling or distasteful) than to try to flatten them in the name of capitalist or administrative efficiency. The fact that one needs to make an argument to the effect that these things are conservative, when most self-identified conservatives plainly don’t think they are, implies acknowledgement that whatever “conservative” means, it means something else – otherwise it would be impossible to convince a self-identified conservative who identifies his or her “conservatism” with nationalism and unfettered capitalism that he or she is wrong in making that identification, and the mission of this magazine would be fruitless.
When I Use A Word, It Means Just What I Choose It To Mean — Neither More Nor Less | The American Conservative. This is why I have great hopes for The American Conservative.