I can hardly wait for the 14th. It’s such a wonderful day, set aside to honor something that’s really only important to a few of us, so it’s nice for others to play along and celebrate the day across the country. After all the freezing rain, snow and wind I’ve survived so far this winter, on Sunday, I’m looking forward to hearing all the nice things people say about Arizona. Lots of Midwesterners from across the frozen north are gathering down there now, paying homage to this great state. It’s great how everyone makes Arizonans feel so welcome.

What? It’s really about Valentine’s Day? How disappointing!

All silliness aside, however, I do celebrate Arizona because it influenced me in two significant ways. First, when you grow up in a desert, you grow up with a keen sense of how fragile the natural world is. Saguaros take almost a century to grow to full maturity. The thin topsoil of the Sonora carries scars from covered wagons (and ATVs) for decades afterwards. Water is a precious resource, especially with all of those internal immigrants drinking so much of it; it’s dangerous to waste it on invasive greenery or contaminate it with toxic industrial or agricultural waste.

The second thing is more relevant to my life now. Growing up in Arizona meant living with conservative values — flowing at least in part from witnessing what happens when we don’t “conserve” our natural environment. Those values also flowed from living with all the decisions about Arizona’s wealth that were made outside the state, politically in Washington, D.C. or economically in California.

I grew up among people who were independent thinkers, skeptical of all outsiders and big government outsiders in particular. Many of us suffered at the hands of multinational mining companies or out-of-state real estate developers or watched water from Arizona watersheds flow into the swimming pools of Los Angeles. There was a libertarian streak in most of us, whichever party we belonged to. I grew up Republican, believe it or not, and once was even chosen to serve as a delegate to the State Party Convention.

Although I long ago severed any official connections to the Republican Party, and no longer have any party affiliation, I still find myself more often sharing the conservative (sometimes even libertarian) perspective on issues facing us — health care reform, the budget deficit, government control of too much of our lives, etc.

But wait, many readers are saying right now. There’s no way this guy can be a conservative! By their definition of the word, of course, they would be right. I’m not that kind of “conservative.”

The baggage that word carries is the main reason conservatives like me keep our heads down. It’s too easy to confuse us with those angry people at the Tea Parties hating taxes of any kind and the government, getting all Leviticus with homosexuals, and opposing anything that Pres. Obama believes is a good idea.

It’s vital that conservatives involved in the Tea Party movement understand that it is a populist uprising, not a conservative one. Populism arises out of people’s anger, sometimes justified, at genuine unfairness in government policies. But people also get angry at corporate policies — layoffs only for the sake of higher profits, monopolies that limit opportunities and raise prices. Populism comes from the left — Hugo Chavez — just as much as from the right. Whoever it’s directed at, anger doesn’t help with governing , and anger-driven populism is easily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians, thrives on ignorance and usually leads to suppression of minority opinions and rights.

Populist and other baggage obscures genuine conservative values: compassion, justice, fiscal restraint, individual rights (including privacy) and responsibilities, fairness, transparency in decision-making. Greed is not one of these values, and neither are personality cults. Nor is bowing to leaders who want to scare us into making them temporary dictators. Government should be representative, small, efficient and only intrude into our lives when necessary. But governments need to also be strong, so when it becomes necessary, its intrusion actually makes a difference for the better.

The quality of life for all of us — rich and poor, urban and rural — depends on the values we inherit more than on the newest fads in politics and society or the latest technologies. Real conservatives are the ones who use society’s brakes as life brings inevitable changes to our lives, so that we humans can stay in control of our own destinies and don’t rush over the edge into chaos.

Albert Lea resident David Rask Behling teaches at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, and lives with his wife and children in Albert Lea. His column appears every other Tuesday.