not here imposing a religious gloss over basically secular institutions; the family and the city were religious at their inception , as authorities have been in most places and at most times.  Even at Rome's nadir of impiety, Cicero saw that a collective consensus on justice is an essential property of a republic, and this consensus on justice is nothing other than the collective affirmation of God's Law that I identified above as the key feature of an authoritative community. Understanding these norm-imposing communities is key to understanding conservatism.  Liberals and other nonconservatives often ask us how we reconcile our commitments to group loyalty and universal morality, to tradition and natural law.  It's a very good question, and those who ask it deserve better answers than the ones they often get.  A related question is this:  are groups to be seen as means or as ends?  The liberals insist that groups are means to the fulfilment of individuals.  When we consider the dignity of the human person, bearing as he does the image of God, and think of how repugnant it would be for persons to be used as mere cannon-fodder, we realize that the liberal must be at least partly right.  It cannot be the case the a group's members are nothing but raw material for the group.  The fascists, on the other hand, say the opposite, that it is the state that is the end and the individuals who are means (i.e. ends only insofar as they are