Playing this week at the Washington Post is a 2,300-word profile [1] of the former congressman from Georgia and current presidential candidate, Bob Barr, which every liberal should read, make plentiful photocopies of, and distribute with utmost solicitude to his or her conservative friends.

Why solicitude? Because there's a profound and disturbing identity crisis talking place among true conservatives, and it is our civic duty, as compassionate liberals, to help them in their hour of confusion and doubt. Well, our duty and Bob Barr's -- and together, we can do it.

We can help these poor dears "find themselves" again; to be at peace, that is, with the institutional indifference to human suffering that true conservatism once championed with near exclusivity, but whose message has since become tragically muddled and diffuse.

No longer. Because Bob Barr, as the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate, is back -- and he has come to throw the Pharisees from the temple.

He has had it -- just plain had it -- with pedigreed conservatism's miscegenation with unrepentant neocons and apocalyptic Puritans. But since the GOP has been hopelessly dragooned by these latter-day fanatics, Mr. Barr is having to spread the Word through organized libertarianism instead (well, as organized as libertarianism can be).

Barr, of course, is a rediscovered conservative himself. And by "conservative," I -- and he -- don't mean what it has come to mean today, thus causing the aforementioned doubt and confusion. It means, rather, a Burkean philosophical adherence to small government, unobtrusive government, fiscally responsible government, no matter how much socioeconomic harm such small government might do or perpetuate.

Yet Barr arrived at this ideological remembrance the hard way, and the road he traveled was long. As the Post's profile notes (even though the profile itself is laden with contemporary confusion as to the meaning of true conservatism):

During his eight years in Congress representing a district in Georgia, Barr was the staunch conservative's dream. Among his accomplishments: renaming National Airport for Ronald Reagan; blocking the District's efforts to approve marijuana use for seriously ill patients; making the public aware of the scourge of Wicca being practiced on military bases. And the big enchilada: authoring the Defense of Marriage Act, which restricted the federal government from recognizing gay marriage -- what he called "the flames of hedonism … licking at the very foundation of our society."

But of course none of that had a bloody thing to do with Edmund Burke, or Calvin Coolidge, or Bob Taft, or even the innermost leanings of Ronald Reagan. They were all impurities, abominations, tergiversations of the original creed.

I suspect that deep down Bob Barr knew this all along -- but the lures of incumbent power, you know. Nevertheless two events -- one of massive scale, the other quite personal -- occurred that brought Mr. Barr back down to earth's clearer vision: the catastrophe of 9/11, which the "conservative" George W. Bush cynically used to fashion a mammothly Bigger-Brother authoritarian government; and, through redistricting, the loss of his House seat in 2002.

No longer part of the Congressional problem, "In time," as the Post article continues, "Barr concluded that the biggest threat to the nation was government power. "

[H]e began to wish he hadn't voted for the Patriot Act. He decided that even Wiccan soldiers should be able to do their Wiccan thing. He concluded that both gay marriage and drug legalization should be left up to the states, even though, personally, he is still against both. Working as a consultant and lobbyist, he started to do work on behalf of civil liberties and privacy rights.

And the rest, as they say, is history: "Barr registered as a Libertarian in 2006, and this February or March decided to run for president on the party's ticket."

Some of his presidential candidacy's motivation erupted no doubt from the scourges of ambition and ego-fulfillment, which, as presidential candidate John McCain now tells us, are scourges indeed. On the other hand, having read the profile and watched Mr. Barr in numerous interviews, I get the sense that he is also philosophically sincere.

Bob Barr as president would not sign any bills appropriating money to the United Nations. Bob Barr as president would advocate against a Department of Education. And, because the United States is not a "charity," Bob Barr as president would attempt to stop the practices of hospitals offering medical care to illegal immigrants and schools educating illegal immigrants' children. Most of all, he'd shrink government and taxes.

Now, I ask you: Don't you think your authentically conservative friends -- not the Scripture enthusiasts who can't distinguish the limits of politics from the promise of paradise, or the global-domination apes who've seen one too many "Rambo" films -- would be absolutely agog at a dreamy platform like that?

Of course they would. They'd love it. They'd eat it up. Yet, deplorable as it is, they are likely quite unaware that there's a candidate out there who heroically stands for these things. Hence they'll go the polls in November and, however unenthusiastically, pull the lever for the familiarity of the GOP's big-government John McCain.

But you can help prevent this tragedy. Make a photocopy today of the Post's Barr profile, and give it to -- push it on -- a conservative friend in informational and spiritual need. He or she will thank you for it, as will genuine conservatism.