What it Means to be Conservative

Our liberal-inspired constitutional republic has always been at risk, but never faced a greater challenge than today.

Let’s get this straight from the start: conservatives and liberals aren’t opposites. Our nation was founded on classical liberalism - the belief that the individual is the ultimate minority and is invested from birth with unalienable rights to exercise free, unrestricted agency, to the extent that exercise does not violate the rights of others. That agency is exercised through inherent, unrestricted, natural rights to own property, speak, worship, associate with others and defend oneself.

This isn’t a new concept, this idea that “conservatives” are “liberal”. Our nation was born of European liberal intellectualism in the 18th century. When our nation fought for and won independence, it was to these foundational liberal values our founders turned to frame our government. Ultimately, our constitution enshrined these values and became the first - and in many ways - the only nation to be founded on such liberal values.

In this regard, liberals are and always have been the opposite of progressives - those clamoring to “perfect” humanity through the force of government. Nothing could be more illiberal than a progressive - and progressives have been agitating their cause since the decline of the monarchs in Europe. Our founders fought and argued stridently, as evidenced by abundant contemporary writing during and after the ratification of our constitution, for the promotion of liberalism in the face of the progressives.

Progressives sought to replace monarchical government with something akin to an elected technocracy - democratically-elected “experts” who would be drawn to positions of power naturally. Unfortunately, the only people drawn to political power “naturally” are those who aren’t good at anything else, and our founders knew this. Our founders were deeply suspicious of “experts drawn to power” as aristocratic elites who would soon be as notorious as the monarchs they’d replaced. The founders sought to keep the individual citizen as the centerpiece of power in our political organizations. And they won that debate.

The constitution itself reflects not just the primacy of the individual citizen’s rights, but also deep distrust of government power as a direct threat to those rights. We learn at an early age about the “checks and balances” within the constitution, but do we learn why this was thought necessary? It isn’t so one branch doesn’t run roughshod over the other two - it’s so that no branch may ever abridge the rights of the individual. And just as importantly, the scope of all federal powers are limited to what is circumscribed in Articles I, II and III - with all remaining powers left to the people themselves, their states and their respective legislatures.

Conservatives today seek to preserve our liberal tradition of individual liberty, freedom and autonomy from government rule. That is the essence of conservatism, and that is why the modern progressive movement is literally at war with conservatism - they are at war with liberal values.

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There’s a great deal of pearl-clutching about how divisive our politics has become. But that’s because there’s no longer any room remaining for the two political philosophies to coexist. Conservatives, or better yet “conservatives” have willingly traded space to progressivism for nigh on 200 years - seeking comity and peaceful coexistence in our great “shared experiment”. But progressives willingly consumed the “half loaves” they were granted and demanded more each time - to the point there’s no more loaves left. So today we observe the modern illiberal progressives - today’s Democrat party - having made their object the obliteration of our most fundamental freedoms: freedom to speak, freedom to worship, property rights and the armed citizen. Even the fundamental right to raise your children how you see fit is under siege. There isn’t any room left to compromise.

The tactics of today’s Democrats center on the ends justifying the means. While today’s conservatives play by Marquess of Queensberry rules, the Democrats go for the jugular - because they’re this close to winning it all. You think not?

Today’s Democrats seriously consider packing the Supreme Court - say, give it 13 justices instead of nine, instantly adding four more progressive jurists to the three already there to “out-vote” the six conservatives (or “conservative” in the case of John Roberts). Then the Supreme Court would just be a rubber stamp to whatever Democrats in the Congress or White House want. Yes, this idea was floated previously in the FDR administration - and he paid a heavy political price for even considering it. But today’s Democrats have no sense of shame - it’s all about the next win and ultimately, total victory through one party rule.

Democrats have conspired with social media to de-platform and censor their political enemies - and gone even further, instituting an Orwellian federal Disinformation Governance Board to monitor and label as “disinformation” that which they disagree with. Now formally the DGB has been “disbanded” but that only means its mission has gone under layers of federal bureaucracy but is still just as active. We have recently uncovered the extent to which the Biden administration “experts” engaged with social media to control what they deem “misinformation”. So if you, like many (most?) Americans, develop your understanding of the world through major social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, you have been unwittingly fed government propaganda by proxy - and shielded from any dissenting ideas or opinions. And make no mistake - this is politicized propaganda in the Soviet tradition. Is this a proper role for any legitimate government?

Many of us were shocked to learn what our public schools were teaching in the classrooms in lieu of reading, writing and arithmetic. Parents were enraged to discover curricula being centered on highly-politicized, inane, degenerate and misanthropic subjects like White Guilt and a veritable panoply of gender confusion. They were justifiably angered by school closures throughout the pandemic - based on zero scientific evidence. They took to the local school boards to complain about these deviations from normative learning - only to be reported to the FBI snitch line for their behavior.

And now, with Democrats having crashed our economy - because two consecutive quarters of economic contraction is still the definition of a recession - they seek to drain our Strategic Petroleum Reserve just before a midterm election in order to buy votes with cheaper gas. If you think cheap gas now is a reason for keeping Democrats in power, ask yourself what is the plan for after the election, when gas prices start going back up - and they don’t need your vote anymore? And this doesn’t consider all the other economic indicators in the red like 8.2% inflation, rising interest rates, a stalled out housing market and historically low labor force participation.

The Democrats’ regulatory regime is relentless in the crises it causes. You probably think the baby formula shortage was over a year ago - it isn’t, it’s still ongoing. We’re now down to a 25-day supply of diesel fuel - you know, the stuff that powers farm equipment, semi trucks and locomotives that move goods throughout our economy. These things don’t run on wind and solar generated electricity. They take diesel fuel which is now in short supply - and the price reflects it.

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The beauty of our liberal-inspired constitutional republic is that it incentivizes the individual to attain whatever station the citizen’s heart desires. Left free to decide for himself, the collective whole is lifted up by each individual’s own aspiration. And for 200 years that engine of prosperity has made us the richest people on Earth. Conservatives get this fundamentally. Progressives resent these accomplishments and seek to tear down and destroy the engine - “regulate it until it stops moving, then subsidize it” to paraphrase Ronald Reagan.

As our economy and politics today demonstrate, there’s no longer any trade space remaining for “compromise” with progressives - we’re either going to be a free people or live in darkness and misery.

I hope we choose freedom next Tuesday.