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This article is from the Conservatism FAQ, by Jim Kalb kalb@aya.yale.edu with numerous contributions by others.

Why do conservatives say they favor virtue and community but in fact favor laissez-faire capitalism? Doesn't laissez- faire capitalism promote the opposite?

Conservatives typically are not fans of pure laissez-faire, although
they view economic liberty as one of the traditional liberties of the
American people that has served that people well. Many are skeptical
of free trade and most favor restraints on immigration for the sake
of permitting the existence and development of a reasonably coherent
national community. Nor do they oppose in principle the regulation or
suppression of businesses that affect the moral order of society,
such as prostitution, pornography, and the sale of certain drugs.

Conservatives do favor free markets when the alternative is to expand
bureaucracy to implement liberal goals, a process that clearly has
the effect of damaging virtue and community. Also, they tend to
prefer self-organization to central control because they believe that
overall administration of social life is impossible. They recognize
that like tradition the market reflects men's infinitely various and
often unconscious and inarticulate goals and perceptions far better
than any bureaucratic process could.

In any event, it's not clear that laissez-faire capitalism need
undermine moral community. "Laissez-faire capitalism" has to do with
limitations on what the government does and only indirectly with the
nature of society as a whole. While social statistics are a crude
measure of the state of community and morality, it is noteworthy that
in England crime and illegitimacy rates fell by about half from the
middle to the end of the 19th century, the heyday of untrammelled
capitalism, and that the rejection of laissez-faire has in fact been
accompanied by increasing social atomization.