Opinion by Chas Cornweller
Conservatism, is a concept that should be so very easy to understand and grasp, you would think it would be a world-wide sensation. It isn’t. I understand conservative. I am a father with daughters. No one and I mean no one is more a conservative than a dad with daughters. You want to put a lid on everything. And a double dead bolt on the front and back doors. Television would be banned for the first, ah, I don’t know…eighteen years. No riding in cars with boys (only their father and possibly the grandfathers, but they too would have to pass a battery of tests) All schools would be mandatory non-coed. And boys over the age of twelve, no, ten, no better make it nine, would be kept outside a fifty foot parameter anywhere my daughters were at any given time. But I digress, this really isn’t conservatism, just the ranting lunacy of a father with daughters. Which brings me to my point. What is conservatism? According to Webster Collegiate Ninth edition it is this: Conservatism n. a : the principles and policies of a Conservative party. 2 b : a political disposition to preserve that which is established b : a political philosophy base on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change 3 : the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change.
Which of any of these definitions define anything that is remotely happening in politics today? Anyone? The only definition I find that comes close is number 2, b…a political disposition to preserve what is established. And I mean that by, any politician who is predisposed to preserve his seat of power. But, you and I both know that pertains to both conservative and liberal politicians. So, no, that doesn’t really fit either. I could sift the definition down to a simple matter of “Maintaining the Status Quo.” No change or slow to change. I also have read (not in Webster’s Dictionary) that conservatives want smaller or no government at all! How would that work? I am going out on a limb here and guess that they mean a smaller “Federal” government. I can see that. But wait! Didn’t Ronald Regan actually increase the national debt? Didn’t he use a borrow for credit incentive to actually increase our nation’s debt from around 1 trillion dollars to nearly 3 trillion dollars? That’s a national debt increase of three hundred percent! Regan also raised taxes eleven times during his presidency, though the tax burden went down. What? You may ask…You see, by decreasing the tax burden substantially in 1981, he would renege on the tax cuts and increase taxes slowly over the next seven years. Sound like smaller government to you? And Ronald Regan to most conservatives is the go to guy of conservatism. Hardly. A major conservative was Barry Goldwater. He exemplified conservatism, even when it cost him politically. True conservatism is a bitter pill to swallow.
Most Americans, save for the very, very, very rich…would not do well under a truly conservative government. Especially after regulations are removed from the monetary systems and bankers and investors (all very conservative themselves) would be allowed to run amuck with everyone else’s money and invest in heaven knows what, but it wouldn’t benefit you or I, just the bankers and investors. You see, the point of conservatism is stability. It is maintaining the status quo and continuing down that path that is so straight and narrow. The problem is, if the things are going bad, do you continue on down that road, neither turning left nor right nor going back the way you came? (like during the Great Depression for example) Do you just muck on through? Are do you consider alternates? If a business (or many businesses) are destroying a healthy and meaningful way of living in the name of profits, do you just allow that? If a policy is heading us toward war and the destruction of another people and their land, because that policy says that our way is correct and true and just and their way is an anathema to our way of thinking, but in actuality it is a pretense to enable the war profiteers to profit, do we just continue? Conservatives would have you think so. In fact, many would insist. They would be so embolden to call in their lesser educated friends from the right of conservatism to insure the insistence of their rightness. It seems conservatives tend to have a bit of a bully within them.
But the conservatives I know are somewhat different from the way conservatives are portrayed in today’s government. Most are well educated, a few are not. Many enjoy a good debate and are affable when doing so. On some points I tend to agree with them. On many other points, not so much. I have found that the conservative with a strong background in world history is the more knowledgeable, amiable debater. But then again, the same holds true with my liberal friends. In other words, it is very difficult to engage in a proper discourse with someone who doesn’t know the difference between William Jennings Bryan and Billy Graham. Or, has never sought out the root causes of World War One and World War Two and discovered the fact that they basically were all the same war. With a recess in the middle, so people could find out that war really was the impetus for war profiteering. Conservatives just want to blame the Bolsheviks/Facist, Liberals want to blame the Capitalist. Mothers just want their sons (and now daughters) to come home alive and in one piece and somewhat sane. Truth is, there are no conservatives during wartime and there are no liberals. Just butchers and their victims.
So, who are these conservatives I speak of? Where do they come from and what is their pedigree? Is it truly a case of “I’ve got Mine, yours is up to You!”? Or is it something fundamentally more complex? Why is there a sense of it’s an exclusive club? And I mean exclusive like, if your background is such and such, you are not welcome here. Or is it more like, “Join us and you’ll be one of Us!”? It’s hard to wrap my head around and so I can just guess which it is. I hear so many different arguments coming from my conservative friends. But then, I see who they latch onto in their political choices for candidates. I watch how they seem to blindly follow their choices down a dark path to fiscal irresponsibility time and time again (fiscal responsibility – a BIG conservative concept!) only to blame another source for their money woes. (Accountability – yet another conservative concept). So, I am beginning to wonder if most of these conservatives are really conservatives at all!
And lastly, since they seem so adept at laying blame at liberals’ feet for the mess we’re in, what is their game plan? I mean, a truly conservative game plan. Something where everyone benefits and no one gets hurt. Well, everyone but the really, really, really disenfranchised, because everyone knows, they will always be around. But, seriously, what is the plan? Is it a Reganesque type plan? You know, reduce taxes greatly and then edge them back up again all the while borrowing and spending? Or maybe a W. Bush plan and invade a sovereign nation on the pretext of destructive weapons? Or is it a plan where you tell folks that there will be no new taxes during your tenure, but you raise them just the same. Thank you, George H. Walker Bush. Seriously, I would like to know what exactly conservatives would like to do to make our government streamlined, efficient and effective. What is the plan?
We live in a nation, Chas Cornweller, where on the best of days, words have no real concrete meaning, anymore, and “conservative” is one of those words with either no real meaning, or any meaning you want to assign to it at that moment in time.
With respect to this squishiness of words, this is what James Madison, a Virginian and future American president, known in our age as the “Father of the U.S. Constitution, writing as Publius in FEDERALIST No. 37 from the Daily Advertiser, Friday, January 11, 1788 had to say on the subject:
All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.
Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other adds a fresh embarrassment.
The use of words is to express ideas.
Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriate to them.
But no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas.
Hence it must happen that however accurately objects may be discriminated in themselves, and however accurately the discrimination may be considered, the definition of them may be rendered inaccurate by the inaccuracy of the terms in which it is delivered.
And this unavoidable inaccuracy must be greater or less, according to the complexity and novelty of the objects defined.
end quote
From what Jemmy is saying there, it is a wonder that we in this country can understand each other, at all, about anything, and especially when it comes to this word or term “conservatism” which can mean anything under the sun, from a term of praise to a pejorative, depending on your personal point of view and what side of the political fence you want to find yourself on.
Looking at how Teddy Roosevelt, another American president, looked at the subject of “conservatism” in politics in his New Nationalism Speech of 1910, we have this:
The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it.
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In that speech, Teddy also told us thusly:
The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.
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Is he talking to us, there, Chas Cornweller, or somebody in our distant past?
Teddy also said this in 1910:
There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains.
To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.
We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public.
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Once again, Chas Cornweller, to whom was Teddy speaking there?
Does any of that apply to us in America today, or have we really managed to slip the shackles of rationality on that subject as we become more and more liberal in this country to the point of anything goes?
If it feels good, then hey, just do it, because there are never consequences to our actions.
Is that something a true conservative would say, and mean it?
Getting back to Teddy, and the “true conservative” who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth and who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it, he continued thusly in that same speech:
It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced.
Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.
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Hmmmmmmmm.
Do those words have the ring of familiarity to them in our times?
For that matter, do we even know what “our times” are anymore here in the United States of America, other than a time of division and confusion in our national affairs?
On that note, jumping forward from Teddy Roosevelt’s time in America, and his definition of a “true conservative” to our times and what a “conservative” in politics is supposed to look like today, I refer us to the MARKETWATCH article “Me, not conservative? ‘Laughable,’ says Gingrich” from December 15, 2011, where we were told as follows with respect to “modern conservatism”:
Assailed by some in his own party and facing a fresh batch of bad poll numbers, Newt Gingrich invoked Ronald Reagan on Thursday night at an Iowa debate and said it’s “laughable” to suggest that he’s not conservative.
Gingrich, still the Republican frontrunner nationally but slipping in Iowa and on prediction market Intrade, was rebutting charges made by his chief rival, Mitt Romney, that he’s an unreliable conservative on issues including climate change.
“I think on the conservative thing it is sort of laughable to suggest that somebody [who has campaigned with] Ronald Reagan and with [former congressman] Jack Kemp and has had a 30-year record of conservatism is somehow not a conservative,” Gingrich said.
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Personally, I think if Teddy Roosevelt heard Newt Gingrich calling himself a “conservative,” he would look old Newt up and down a time or two, and smile at him with those big horse teeth of Teddy’s showing, and he would likely give Newt a paraphrase of what Lloyd Bentsen told Danny Quayle back when: “Newt, I knew some real conservatives, and you’re not one of them, nor was Ronald Reagan!”
So who is the real conservative?
Being from the country in a place where it gets cold, and the cold doesn’t care one whit whether you live or die in the winter, I would say the real conservatives were those old folks who told me when young, “son, if you want to have something to put in the ground come spring, then you don’t eat the seed corn.”
Those for me are words that have passed the test of time, so to me, that is conservatism, as it keeps me alive far better than liberality and frivolousness would, but that is something a conservative would say, isn’t it?
So, the ball is back to you, Chas Cornweller: what does the term “conservative “really mean?
Well, I must say, Paul Plante when you give someone something to chew on, it more or less represents an entire buffet of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners all rolled into one! Your comment was excellent and so much so I had to re-read it several times and refer to my trusty “Websters’” at least three times. Quoting Teddy Roosevelt was a touch of genius and in my opinion shows just how clearly the paradox of political conservatism can be. But, first I want to answer your “seed corn” comment. Brilliant! Just brilliant. In my youth and being raised in the rural south, I met a lot of well-meaning uneducated persons. I was fortunate to have had a good education by some of the finest teachers in the area. That said, some of the sagest advice I ever got was from an individual who had never traveled any further than a fifty mile radius from where he was born and I believe could neither read nor write. He told this to me one day, and I quote. “I wouldn’t take a cartload of book sense over a thimble full of common sense.” Took me awhile to catch on to what he was telling me (my superior education was blocking some of my thinking skills!) But, it is akin to your “don’t eat the seed corn.” One of those adages that rolls around your brain for the rest of your life and from time to time pops up and points the boogey man out.
Conservatism is a bit like common sense. But, it also can be a superior education when applied in the wrong context. In other words, it can tie your hands. Teddy Roosevelt’s most famous and long lasting decrees from his office was the establishment of several national parks and the park system itself. Conservative? Or Progressive? It’s an arguable point. He also, busted up monopolies and trust systems, enabling a fairer system of trade and equable monetary exchanges. Again, conservative or progressive? I am amazed at how many people consider Teddy Roosevelt a conservative. But, as you say, the word itself is malleable. Then, again, I am amazed at how many take Progressive ideas as the spawn of Satan. How the word “Liberal” has come to mean, free handouts, outrageous taxation, throwing our veterans on the trash heap of society when America is done with their service in time of war. Just a few things liberals have been accused of. When in actuality, in the course of history, it was liberals who fought and were jailed for Suffragette’s rights. It was liberals who fought as Abolitionist prior to the Civil War. It was liberals who wrote of the insidious meat packing industry of the early nineteen hundreds and brought about reform through the Food and Drug Act. It was liberalism that got legislation passed during the thirties that got the economy working again, put young people to work in camps and started getting America back on its feet. It was a liberal program to build the Interstate Highway system throughout America. It was a liberal policy that put a man (actually a dozen men) on the moon.
So, my thinking is this. Conservatives vs. Progressives (Liberals), is it just a matchup in the political arena for gas lighting the rest of society? Or is it a truer struggle of an America I have yet to see? And again, why so much animosity between the two parties? Why have the American people gotten so angry with one another over political stance? When did society become so ugly and dare I say it, stupid? I miss the old days, when the Gipper and the Tipper could commiserate together over drinks, only to go at it again in the hallowed halls of Congress the following day. I guess I miss most, the good old days, when things used to get done in Washington with purpose.
With respect to the meaning of “conservative” being all over the map, depending on where someone wants the word to be, at p.518 of “A Short History Of Western Civilization” by Charles Edward Smith, Louisiana State University, and Lynn M. Case, University of Pennyslvania, copyright 1948, we were given the word in this context:
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were characterized by the advance of rationalism and the consequent weakening of dogmatism and superstition.
In large measure, the intellectual currents were a prolongation of the moverments initiated during the Renaissance.
New ideas, as always, had to make headway against the innate conservatism of man that makes him impatient of doubt and loath to entertain ideas that disturb his mental complacency.
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New ideas, as always, had to make headway against the innate conservatism of man that makes him loath to entertain ideas that disturb his mental complacency.
Where “loathe” is a verb meaning “feel intense dislike or disgust for,” and “complacency” is a noun meaning “a feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements,” I would say that that puts the word “conservative” in rather a bad light.
And that takes us to American politician and presidential contender Rick Santorum, who in September 2005, gave a speech that outlined the successes and failures — but, more centrally, the future — of conservatism, at the Heritage Foundation’s First International Conservative Conference on Social Justice.
Then in November 2005, he adapted his speech into an op-ed piece for the political website Townhall.com outlining his vision for “Compassionate Conservatism”:
“What I call ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ has something unique to offer to the shaping of our future.”
“Compassionate Conservatism relies on healthy families, freedom of faith, a vibrant civil society, a proper understanding of the individual and a focused government to achieve noble purposes through definable objectives which offers hope to all.”
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A focused government to achieve noble purposes through definable objectives which offers hope to all, Chas Cornweller.
Does that sound like something from out of Plato’s Republic?
And what about “Compassionate Conservatism” relying on healthy families, freedom of faith, and a vibrant civil society?
Isn’t it the future of our nation that relies on healthy families?
Isn’t freedom of faith, or liberty of conscience, a basic human right in this country?
And wouldn’t a vibrant civil society be a goal of any rational person?
So are those things the exclusive possessions of what Rick Santorum is calling “Compassionate Conservatism?”
I for one do not think so.
Getting back to Rick Santorum and his take on “conservatism,” he went on as follows:
“Conservatism is based upon the idea of preserving the good in our society, adding to it the wisdom of experience coupled with the courage and optimism of a new generation.”
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What about liberalism then, or progressivism?
What ideas are they based on?
Are they against preserving the good in our society?
Or do they see the good in our society in some vastly different light on that subject than do the conservatives like Rick Santorum, who told us this formula inspired Ronald Reagan?
This, Chas Cornweller, seems to take us back to your musing about Conservatives vs. Progressives (Liberals) being nothing more than just a matchup in the political arena for gas lighting the rest of society.
Isn’t it really just us gas-lighting ourselves, thinking that any of those words mean anything concrete outside of what is in the mind, if anything, of the person using the words as labels?