So there you have it. In a nut shell, the difference between communism and socialism. In the name of the greater conservative movement, go forth and troll – but troll them with the style and grace that education brings. The next time a liberal demands you to explain it to them, do so, and make them look like a complete and total moron.

This blog entry is another installment of Ask Janus. Today, we’re talking about wildfires and trying to figure out if environmentalists are actually making the wildfires we experience every year worse by opposing controlled burns.

Regulatory takings are things which the government doesn’t technically take from you, but which they have regulated to the point where they are of little or no value. Naturally, this type of situation results in a large number of very pissed off people who feel that the government has quite literally stolen their property from them. Whether their claims are true or someone’s just crying wolf depends on the exact regulation and property, but the mere existence of such a loophole in our system is outrage enough.

Janus delivers the long answer for how one defines a conservative.

What is a conservative? It’s a deceptively simple question. Its made complicated by the long history of conservative philosophy in America, the fact that American conservatism is different from the conservatism found in other countries, the many strains of conservatism, the self-conflicting nature of trying to balance mutually exclusive aspects of our inalienable rights, and the fact that conservative minds disagree with one another all the time. The short answer is that there is no one face of conservative ideology.