What does it mean to be an American Conservative?

What it means to be an American “conservative” has become hotly contested in ways that surpass debates over fusionism and electoral coalitions.  Some self-styled conservatives dismiss the American founding as an ideologically flawed Enlightenment project with little in it worth conserving.  This lecture will examine the American revolutionary experience and examine key American founders in order to answer the question, What does it mean to be an American conservative?