I know, the first thing you’re going to say in looking at the headline here is: why is a guy who can’t even spell the word conservative correctly writing a column on this widely respected website?
Well OK, I admit it’s a cheap trick to get your attention, but done in the spirit of making a point about what conservatism is in the truest sense. And this is more than just semantics.
The word conservative means a commitment to conserving something. But not all those who have been called conservative around the world have tried to conserve good things.
In the Soviet Union, the so-called conservatives were those who were conserving the totalitarian state by crushing latter-day attempts to reform it. And Vladimir Putin would be considered a conservative today for conserving the ruling Russian oligarchy that succeeded the Soviet state. In the middle east, the conservative islamists are those who conserve the letter of the Koran law, including its call for jihad. The Saudi royal family is conservative, as they conserve their own untold riches and power which constitute the only organizing principles of the Saudi state. In Cuba, Raul Castro is a conservative, for he cares only about conserving – regardless of their disastrous application – the Marxist principles that his brother employed to transform Cuba more than 50 years ago
So it is up to American conservatives to get a whole lot better at explaining exactly what they are trying to conserve.
Conservative is a description that virtually all Republicans, at least all those outside of major metropolitan areas, want to claim for themselves. But as the conservative movement – and the GOP writ large – continues its soul-searching, one thing about which virtually all conservatives agree is that the tent must be widened by taking the message to a larger audience, including blacks, Hispanics, Asians, young people and single women – the core constituencies in both President Obama’s successful re-election strategy and the left’s vision for future dominance.
Thanks in large part to the systematic and successful class warfare conducted by the left with the aid and comfort of a spectacularly incurious and complicit mainstream media, those voters who form the leftist base view conservative as a dirty word, suggestive of cranky, greedy bigots.
Just as Christians are implored by Peter to be able to give reasons for the hope that lies within us, and thus our belief in conserving Christian truth, conservatives must make clear what they are conserving.
Conservatives and libertarians of all stripes should agree that what they are conserving are the founding principles. Not those who developed the principles, for they were brilliant but imperfect as we all are, and not those who claim to embrace those principles, for there are many poseurs (just as not all who cry “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven). But the principles themselves.
Freedom of speech, self-defense, commerce, freedom from illegitimate search and seizure, private property, checks and balances, enumerated powers, etc. These are principles that, when practiced, left an unimpeachable legacy by transforming a colonial backwater into the world’s greatest superpower not by the force which marked the rise of previous superpowers, but by the opposite – the organizing principle that undergirds all of our other founding principles: liberty.
If we actually, really, truly believe in the efficacy of ordered liberty based on our founding principles, then it follows that we believe these principles are every bit as valuable to leftist constituencies as they are to the conservative base. In fact, even more valuable, because those who vote for leftists have for the most part not put these principles to work in their own lives and thus have not experienced the benefits of liberty, instead becoming captive and dependent on the progressive principles that are an affront to liberty.
Conservatives and libertarians will never embrace progressive principles. But wayward leftists can most definitely embrace the founding principles if we can demonstrate what a positive difference those principles will make in their lives. We must be able to drive home the fundamental point that socialism has never succeeded – never – but liberty always does, in the lives of both individuals and nations.
So preaching beyond the choir is now mandatory. One example of the type of initiatives we must embrace has been the work of K. Carl Smith, who has confronted charges that Republicans are racists, making inroads into black communities by connecting the life of Frederick Douglass to the legacy of liberty in the historic Republican party.
This battle for the soul of the movement and the GOP has now become extremely personal. It has moved beyond the philosophical differences between paleo-cons, neo-cons and libertarians to the public trashing of others within the movement and the party. John McCain attacking fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul on the floor of the senate is a public manifestation of the battle going on in private.
But in the words of the philosopher Rodney King, can’t we all just get along? Airing dirty linen in public just adds to the impression that conservatism is in disarray. Unlike the left, we don’t need to employ strong arm tactics in order to conduct a healthy debate on the most effective application of our founding principles.
Instead of focusing on what divides us, we can draw strength from the attributes that each faction of the movement for liberty brings to the table. Paleo-conservatives bring an institutional memory, neo-conservatives an idealism and libertarians a passion for undiluted liberty.
All of them claim faithfulness to conserving America’s founding principles. The question is whether they can be as faithful in embracing the reality that, in the words of Ben Franklin referring to divisions among the very men who developed our founding principles, we must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.
