Pillars of Conservatism

In that long drawn out journey that is our Presidential Primary Season, there has been a lot of talk about the "Republican Base" and how John McCain has to satisfy the Conservatives that he is a "real Republican". The term conservative gets thrown around a lot in the media, but from listening to the reporters it's clear that most of them really do not get the concept of conservatism, or know what conservatives really believe. Very often people get wrapped up in issues. If a person does not like gun control, that person is labeled a conservative, if they are for the death penalty, the conservative label is attached, if they are against abortion, out comes the label. But these are individual issues and a person's stands on them are individual. There are conservatives who are for abortion and against the death penalty for example. So the label should not be applied based on stands on individual issues.

The term Conservative, when applied to politics, refers to a person who wishes to maintain, or "conserve" the status quo, whereas a Liberal or "progressive" as they are wishing to be called, desires change. In American politics these labels do not really fit, given the way that our government has developed since the 1930s. Many people today would be surprised to know that from its founding in the 1850s until the turn of the last century the Republicans were considered the radical party, while the Democrats were trying to maintain the systems that were in place. It was a Republican president and Congress that strengthened the Federal Government, passed the 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th amendments, and used Federal troops to enforce voting rights in the south. The Democrats fought every change in order to strengthen states rights and maintain their own interests.

At the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s the situation began to reverse itself. As the radical Republicans of the 1860s became older, they became less radical and more focused on the needs to promote westward expansion. The extremists in the party drifted away and the party began to resemble how it appears today. With the Wilson Administration and its focus on internationalism the Democratic Party began a transformation in the opposite direction. With the rise of Socialism and the labor movement before and after the First World War, many Democrats, especially in the north, adopted a populist agenda. This reached its zenith with the Roosevelt Administration and the Great Depression, but the evolution was not complete until the last of the "Dixiecrats", conservative, segregationist southern Democrats, faded from the political scene in the 1970s. In the 75 years since the first Franklin Roosevelt Administration the government has become more and more socialist in nature, so in reality the Democrats who wish to maintain that trend are the "conservatives", while those Republicans, who wish to shrink government and return more control to the people, are the "liberals". In spite of that, for the sake of clarity in this article, I will maintain the traditional view of conservative and liberal.

I do not pretend to understand, or even know what the core beliefs of liberals are, and I do not intend this article as a criticism of any political belief system. It is simply an explanation of what I believe are the four key elements of conservatism as practiced in America today.

The government that governs least governs best.

The job of government is to protect the people from things from which they cannot protect themselves. It is not the responsibility of government to protect people from themselves. A government that seizes the power of personal choice from the people is tyrannical by its nature.

The Constitution is Inviolate.

Everything in the Constitution was put there for a reason, and those things that were left out were left out for a reason. To re-interpret the Constitution based on the political whim or expediency of the moment leads only to increasing the power of government and decreasing the power of the people.

People are individuals and should be judged solely as individuals.

No person should be judged based on group membership. Each person should be free to succeed or fail based on their individual actions and abilities, not on who their ancestors were.

People control their own destiny.

Each able-bodied person's situation in life is the direct result of the choices they make and the effort they put forth.

Discussion

In 1932, before Franklin Roosevelt and his alphabet soup of federal agencies, most Americans were only vaguely aware that the Federal Government even existed. Only a very tiny portion of the population paid income taxes and the only contact the average American had with the Federal Government was when they went to the Post Office. In times of peace it really didn't matter much who was in the White House because, as Lincoln said, "...their opportunity for mischief is limited..." Now as I write this nothing within my view has escaped government regulation in some way and there is barely a facet of our lives that is not intruded upon by a law or regulation. If we deposit too much cash into our bank accounts, the government has to be told. If we run a business we must inform the government of nearly every facet of our operations from where we locate, to whom we hire, to what we sell. If we want to place a bet with our own money at an Internet casino, we have to fear investigation and arrest. We have somehow forgotten that governments are the only entities that are permitted to use deadly force to enforce their will. Each time we have allowed a law to be passed controlling what is essentially a personal choice, we have had to grant government new and more intrusive powers to enforce those laws, and in the process surrendered some of our freedom in exchange for imagined safety. Should a government be allowed to shoot someone dead because they choose to drive their car without a seatbelt? Any time a law is violated the situation has the potential to escalate to that point. As Benjamin Franklin said, "If a man would exchange liberty for safety, he deserves to be neither free nor safe."

Over the years the concept has evolved that our constitution is a "living document" that changes with the times. Nothing is more dangerous than this idea. It is not "a living document". If it is a living document subject to the political whim or expediency of the moment, why have a constitution at all? The most important amendment in the Bill of Rights is the 10^th Amendment which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Yet this very specific limitation has gotten lost in the desire to be protected from all ills, so much so that Joseph Biden, senior senator and presidential candidate spoke of the "...un-enumerated powers of the Federal Government..." when discussing judicial nominations and it never occurred to the reporter to ask him what he was talking about. In this living document theory the Constitution has been constantly re-interpreted to increase the power and reach of the Federal Government at the expense of the states and the people.

In our legal system the concept of the "protected group" has gained ascendency in both criminal and civil law. The rights of the group have become pre-eminent to the rights of the individual. In practice this has evolved into a series programs, preferences and laws that have created special opportunities for some groups while denying equal opportunity to others, all to "... correct past injustices..." But in practice does this not punish a segment of our society for the inequities and injustices of their forebears? Probably the most heinous manifestation of this thinking is special penalties for hate crimes. We can all agree that assaulting or murdering someone because of their race, creed, or other distinguishing characteristic is one of the most disgusting crimes imaginable, but on the other side is it right to involve the Federal Judiciary in a criminal prosecution and create a new level of penalties solely on the basis of what the perpetrator was thinking when the crime was committed? Just as importantly, under this concept are all citizens protected equally under the law? To grant special protection to one group requires that the rights of another group be suppressed, therefore to do so is an affront to the principles on which our country was founded.

In the concepts that all people are created equal and are individuals to be judged on their own merits and frailties is embedded the reality that each person is responsible for his or her own destiny. Absent a handicap through accident or disease, the notion that there are people who are "less fortunate" or that there is somehow a "life's lottery" flies in the face of personal responsibility. People rise or fall based on their choices and their actions, not the results of some unnamed mystical power. To believe otherwise is to believe that some people are somehow inherently inferior to others and cannot succeed on their own. They therefore must be forever dependent on society for their survival. Government interference does not solve poverty. Government interference creates poverty. It crushes personal initiative, destroys entrepreneurial spirit, shreds families, and creates a cycle of dependence that requires a nearly superhuman effort to break.

In Summary

Conservatives believe in the primacy of the individual over the group; that people should be free to reap the rewards of their efforts and sometimes suffer the consequences of their mistakes. The core of this is the idea that when government interferes with things that are beyond its traditional scope, it infringes upon the freedom of the people and often makes the probelm it is trying to fix worse.