Is Donald Trump conservative? What about Paul Ryan? What is the “conservative” position on drug legalization? Immigration? Military intervention? Social Security? Do you have to be religious to be conservative?

There is, upon reflection, only one argument winding its way through the right side of the political spectrum this year: what does it mean to be conservative? The Tea Partiers are convinced that most office-holders are just big government liberals in conservative costumes. Establishment Republicans believe the GOP’s hard right is a lunatic fringe that will unspool the conservative movement right at the moment of victory. No one thinks Donald Trump is conservative except Donald Trump. Does that matter?

I am not going to bother a definition. Russell Kirk, one of the movement’s patron saints in America, said that conservatism is not really an ideology, but a mindset, a mode of thought, or an approach to the world. I bend in Kirk’s direction, but Kirk’s formulation is malleable, and perhaps that is the point.

Jay Nordlinger, Senior Editor at National Review, writes a brief article on this very question here. It is worth reading and pondering. Nordlinger wants a “big tent” conservatism that draws few hard lines. As he notes in the piece, he is often called too radical by the left and too liberal from the right. That doesn’t make him moderate, but it does mean he defines conservatism with dotted lines.

Here is Nordlinger’s self description of his own beliefs that define conservatism of a sort:

I believe that to be a conservative is to be for limited government. Personal freedom. The rule of law. The Constitution, and adherence to it. Federalism. Equality under the law. Equality of opportunity. Relatively light taxation. Relatively light regulation. Free enterprise. Property rights. Free trade. Civil society. The right to work. A strong defense. National security. National sovereignty. Human rights. A sound, non-flaky educational curriculum. School choice. A sensible stewardship over the land, as opposed to extreme environmentalism. Pluralism. Colorblindness. Toleration. E pluribus unum. Patriotism. Our Judeo-Christian heritage. Western civilization. I want to throw in, too, the right to life.

Another minor battle is being fought between George Will and Bill O’Reilly. Will wrote an op-ed column that eviscerated O’Reilly’s most recent book, Killing Reagan. O’Reilly invited Will on his show and, in typical fashion, interrupted him and called the Pulitzer Prize winner “a hack.” On its face, this may seem irrelevant to Nordlinger’s piece, but it is not. Will is confronting one icon of a particular kind of conservatism, the kind full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. For Will, O’Reilly, and by extension those captivated by the rhetoric, but not the thought, of conservatism, distorts reality and deceives his followers by lamenting either a past that never existed or a future that will not be. Will is launching a missile at elements of the right that are, in his mind, unwilling to confront reality. O’Reilly, for Will, helps define a “cultural pathology of self-validating vehemence with blustery certitudes substituting for evidence.”

There are two essential elements to successful politics–a firm grip on reality and an understanding of what changes that reality might bear. Conservatives disagree over both elements at the moment, but they are mistaking those disagreements for apostasy. Perhaps more than anything, conservatives need to learn to argue with each other in a manner that is persuasive to the broader culture.

Still, what is “conservative” to you?