There seems to be a lot of back and forth over the definitions of Republican and conservatism as of late. My colleague Brian Schoeneman gives an exposition on what he believes a Republican to be, and it’s worth reading. Some of you have read this before; it has been a work in progress over some years. Today, I feel compelled to share it.
As conservatives, we believe in certain defining principles. These principles define who we are and what we believe is the best, most practical and most moral way to govern. This does not mean we believe governance is the best way to produce a good society. To the contrary, because we are conservatives, we believe in the rights of the individual conscience to first and foremost govern ourselves.
Because we believe this, by design conservatives inherently distrust the application of government and law in private affairs, and inherently trust the conscience of the individual against social intrusion. Above all else, we understand the application of law to be for one singular purpose — to defend the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property as defined in our Declaration of Independence.
Individualism vs. Socialism
This defense of individualism does not extend to a libertine understanding of human beings. As conservatives, we understand clearly we are individuals living amongst others in a free and open society. Individuals have free exercise of their rights, and do not have the right to extend their liberties into license, violating the rights of others.
Conversely, conservatives firmly believe in the conscience of the individual as the best arbiter of a just and moral society. Furthermore, we believe the imposition of the state is both counterintuitive and costly to individual action.
There is indeed a balance between the libertine and the socialist; the conservative ethic. As conservatives, we believe moral order is necessary, but moral ordering extends only so far as it permits the “opportunity society” to operate.
We are eminently mindful how the state, when it imposes a finite moral order, does a disservice to society by supplanting our responsibilities as individuals to police ourselves. The state, by assuming it must be the final and only distributor of wealth, charity, and order, takes away the conscience and liberty making us truly individual.
It is the conscience of the individual which allows society to function best. When the state assumes individual conscience and imposes the collective conscience of the state, it robs individuals of the right to determine what is proper and just.
As the state grows, the individual lessens. The more the state assumes of our own free will into the collective conscience, the less inclined individuals are to utilize their own conscience. More and more our individualism is undermined by the social collective, and as opportunities and scenarios arise when we must exercise our conscience, we begin to turn – not to ourselves – but to the state for answers, because that is precisely where we have placed our conscience, judgment, and initiative.
As conservatives, we reject the principle of socialism and emphatically defend the rights of the individual. Furthermore, we recognize individual consciences as the fabric of American society keeping us free individuals and not tools of the state.
For these reasons, we reject large government, reject social engineering and state planning, reject the state as the distributor of charity, reject the state as the organ providing the well-being of her citizens, and reject the system of oppressive taxation robbing us of our means and forcing us to rely on the state rather than ourselves.
What we propose and endorse is a small, restricted government protecting our citizens from those who would do us harm, we endorse individual action and an “opportunity society” allowing for innovation and enterprise, we endorse the rights of individuals assisting their fellow citizens, we endorse the rights of individuals to secure their own prosperity, and we endorse the lightest possible burden of taxation on individuals to protect our society so we may determine for ourselves our future independent of the state.
Law and Morality
How are we to arrive at the opportunity society by simultaneously defending the rights of the individual while preventing the excess of social collectivism? It begins with a proper understanding of law, what it does, and how it operates.
All individuals regardless of their faith understand lawmaking as an ultimately moral and ethical framework. Our laws are our own judgment on the values of our society. Therefore, it is imperative we govern in a just, right, and moral manner.
As conservatives, we understand laws originate from a source higher than ourselves; otherwise they are not laws at all, but tyranny imposed by fellow individuals. Furthermore, we believe lawmaking is not a process to encourage good behavior. To the contrary, lawmaking is a process discouraging bad behavior, allowing for a freely operating and just society to flourish without the imposition of the state.
Conservatives believe lawmaking is both an inherently moral and political process. It is moral because we intend for our lawmakers to exercise their conscience in passing moral laws, rejecting immoral laws, and discerning between the two. It is a political process because we believe the strict and narrow refining of conduct is a process delegated to the realm of faith and religion; not to the state.
Conservatives therefore believe the power of the state is regulated to one purpose alone; the regulation of a free society. Laws therefore extend to the point they allow for the proper functioning of society, and do not interfere with individual action. In this understanding of law, conservatives reject all notions of state action supplanting or undermining the free decisions of individuals.
Life
As conservatives, we understand no society can exist without a framework providing for the safety for those who exist within society.
Therefore, we understand there are three inalienable rights guaranteed by the Creator which society has as its utmost end to protect; life, liberty, and property. The defense of all three is seamless; by impinging upon one quality one gravely offends all three.
Conservatives believe our right to life is to be defended at all times, in all places, no matter what its condition. This begins from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.
This defense of life does not end at an opposition to such issues as abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia, and the like. It extends to the treatment of the human person in the workplace.
Building on the great progressive tradition of the 19th century, conservatives believe firmly in the light and necessary regulation of society to prevent a slide into corporatism. Furthermore, we reject the debilitating and coercive effects of the state injuring and crippling the ability of individuals to prosper independent of social collectivism.
As conservatives, we firmly believe and emphatically defend the ability of the free market as the best, most judicious, and most equitable distributor of goods and services. We know through our history that it was the free market — and not the state — that created the burst of wealth during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The free market’s increase of the general well-being of so many individuals is a historical feat restrained only by the effects of socialism and the collective action of the state. It is because of this historical truth we continue to fight and will forever resist the imposition of the state upon the economic rights and well-being of individual action and prosperity.
Furthermore, as conservatives, we emphatically believe an educated individual best defends and upholds the rights of our citizens. Therefore, we firmly believe all families have the right to the education as they see fit for themselves and their children.
As conservatives, we not only understand the rights of the individual, but we emphatically believe the building blocks of society rest within families. As we recognize the elementary building blocks of a just society, we further understand and emphatically declare our support for family, and refuse to surrender or compromise, for we understand the foundations of our society must not be weakened either by the state or by revisionists seeking to supplant our first societal origins with alternative notions or lifestyles.
Liberty
Human beings are social creatures interacting within a society. As we recognize and respect individualism, we understand further we are not autonomous creatures. As such, our individual liberties extend only so far as they do not impinge upon the liberties of others.
Liberty is not to be confused with license. License is an archaic, rebellious, and damaging exercise of freedom. It injures and rejects the very principles of a free society making liberty possible. Nor is liberty to be narrowly defined as the liberty to express one opinion alone. This is tyranny – the suffocation of thought and expression. As conservatives, we reject both license and tyranny as damaging and opposite to the definition of liberty.
Liberty is a right, but it is a right individuals must be protect from the twin vices of license and tyranny. Our liberties exist only insofar as we are willing to protect them, for while individuals have a vested interest in protecting their liberty, the state has little toleration or need for the exercise of individual conscience.
Liberty is best defended in an open society, a society where individuals can freely share and critique other opinions, beliefs, and thoughts in a proper, educated, and just manner. It is within this open society, the “public square,” the marketplace of ideas where we are truly free. Participation in the public square is not necessary, but individuals should always have the right to participate as they see fit.
Society therefore is empowered to one single end; the protection of the public square and the liberties we enjoy within.
Property
Over time, through the honest work of our own industry, individuals acquire and are entitled to property and ownership. Because we all obtain this property through the work of our own hands, abilities, and will, we alone are entitled to the fruits of our labor, and only through the vital necessity of maintaining society are we compelled to part with what we own.
Furthermore, as conservatives we understand individuals seek to continue to expand our prosperity, not just for ourselves, but for others through the goodness and ingenuity of our skill, inventiveness, and intuition. Therefore, because we understand individuals governed with a spirit of industry know best how to create new growth and new capital into the free market, we jealously regard the individual’s right to property as essential to the proper ordering of society.
Because individuals have every right to their property, the state should only obtain from us what is absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of society – and nothing else.
Therefore, as conservatives, we reject the burden of taxation social collectivism imposes upon a free people. Furthermore, we reject the idea property is to be shared in common. Rather, we affirm both the rights of individuals to enjoy the fruits of their own labor independent of the state, and likewise we affirm the rights of individuals to both own and respect others rights to their property as well.
As conservatives, we understand all individuals are created equal, but not all individuals apply their gifts equally. Furthermore, while in creation they are equal, individuals are born into station, for better or worse.
Rather than strip these individuals of their place, as conservatives we hold fast to the ideals of the “opportunity society” where free men and women can prosper independent of state-enforced redistribution of capital. Furthermore, we believe in the rewards of merit, and in order to build this meritocracy, we must embrace the free market as the single, best, and most efficient producer of goods and services. Intervention by the state only imposes constraints, ultimately hurting producers, consumers, the economy, and ultimately well-deserving individuals.
The free market is the best guarantor of property based on merit and not on privilege, because it alone punishes those who cannot intelligently secure their wealth while simultaneously affording those who through the work of their own industry rise from even the most abject poverty into great material prosperity.
Because such a system demands individual action and not social collectivism, as conservatives we rightly inherit and defend the most just and practical system to benefit the material well-being of humanity.
Governance
Because we believe law stems from a higher source, lawmaking ultimately demands moral and just lawmakers. Furthermore, because we believe our rights to life, liberty, and property all stem from that same source; we believe our rights as individuals are absolute, free from the influence and contagion of both our fellow individuals and of society.
Because our rights are absolute and stem from an absolute source, we understand our actions to be virtuous or vicious, right or wrong, just or unjust. Because of this, as conservatives we understand the nature of governance is not to narrowly define all instances of moral action, but rather to ensure a proper society can thrive so we as individuals may come to these conclusions on our own.
Critics may argue that by enforcing some constraints upon society, we impose a morality. This is true, but our morality enforced by the state extends only so far as it enables and protects the individual’s rights to life, liberty. Conservatives reject the notion of libertinism taking advantage of others rights to the benefit of one’s self, and likewise we reject the notion of socialism which deprives all others of these inalienable rights to the benefit of the state. Only in a just balance found within the conservative ethic do we discover rights are only properly called such insofar as they treat the rights of others as both equal and inalienable.
Conclusion
It was Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics who argued for a system of morality entirely independent of religious sentiment. Likewise, it was this foundation the early Judeo-Christian ethic so quickly embraced, and so totally did it do this we forgot our Aristotelian roots until the 12th century. As we recalled our past, Western civilization built upon the great history of the late Scholastics until the dawn of the Enlightenment.
It was during the Enlightenment our Western thinkers began to develop new theories of governance. Hobbes declared the state of human nature was nothing short of constant warfare; the looming Leviathan state the only presence keeping peace. Hugo Grotius half-heartedly revived the Thomistic tradition of natural law and inalienable rights, while John Locke’s Treatise on Government argued for a just and representative form of governance based on a moral and just people.
It was upon this fertile soil we find our early American Republic founded upon. This mix of ideas both new and old was the foundation upon which Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and the other Founding Fathers built our nation upon. It was one infused with the fury of new ideas and the foundation of the old Judeo-Christian ethic. Ours was the first government founded upon the idea of a “social contract,” in much the same way as God formed His contract with Moses in the Old Testament.
This contract was both sacred and secular; it was the organization of a government entirely divorced from the old order, yet by virtues of the gifts and rights imparted upon us as individuals, a reflection of the work the Creator made in us.
In essence, the American Republic was founded not on compromise, but upon balance. Balance between the secular and the sacred, the individual and his society, the rights we hold and the rights held in common.
It is this balance that requires the vigilance of a just and moral people.
We are surrounded by many differing philosophies. Some demand total freedom and anarchy. Others demand total control. Some operate under the guise of surrendering conscience; others operate under the impression that unrestrained conscience is necessary. All of these lead either to the tyranny of anarchy, or the tyranny of state control.
There is but one solution, one balance, and one political philosophy advocating the rights of the individual without sacrificing his qualities. Only the conservative defends the rights of the unborn without undermining or overemphasizing the role of society. Only the conservative defends the right of human conscience to determine its own destiny, without the swaying either towards libertinism or socialism. Only the conservative demands the lessening of the state so the individual can truly exercise the liberty he was created to enjoy.
It was Aristotle who argued that virtue – true virtue – lies within the mean. Faced on both sides with the twin vices of anarchy and libertinism on one hand, and socialism and collectivism on the other, it is the conservative alone whose singular grace lies within its defense of the individual conscience.
For we understand in order for our conscience to be truly and freely exercised and able to choose the right, we must enable our society to provide only the framework – and not the means – to do so. This ability lies within our reach, and our laws extend only so far as individuals use their conscience to do harm to our lives, to our liberty, and to our property.
For this reason, we will tirelessly challenge and oppose such things as abortion, euthanasia, high taxation, state-enforced charity, entitlements, excessive regulation, and all the impositions of the state invading and otherwise impinging upon the inalienable rights of individuals, no matter what our station or condition.
Similarly, we support, endorse, and fight for the rights of all human life in all stages and conditions, freely chosen education, low taxation, freely given charity independent of the state, necessary regulation, and the benefits of the opportunity society enabling and rewarding merit and initiative.
It is for these reasons and on these principles we proudly call ourselves CONSERVATIVES.
