Conservativism and Morality (Cathryn Crawford)

Excellent piece. Thank you. JMO, but I believe you postulate the ideal; morality is conservatism. This is true for the traditionally valued conservative. Secular society has seemed to blur the lines however. We now seem to have social conservatism and political conservatism and they don't always tend to aim or arrive at the same destination. Our republic founded upon Judeo/Christian values was privilaged to have a group of people, steeped in those values which penned the greatest document man has devised to govern a society based upon equality and fraternity, thereby allowing any within that society to strive and achieve based upon the effort any particular individual wished to exert, or not as the case may be. That Constitution and Bill of Rights set forth the basic tenants of our republic. The rights and responsibilities laid forth in that document are as valid today as the day they were written.

However, our secular society, today has gorged upon the rights and at the same time seems to want to forget the responsibilites that go along with them, regardless of which political label the individual labels himself.

We don't need to re-invent the wheel. It is all there for us to follow and yet we don't. The solution is to follow our Constitution as written and not keep tampering with this article or that to fit our situation. I am not sure we can get back from whence we came.

Ben Franklin opined, and I paraphrase. This great experiment of government, of, for, and by the people, will only work until "the people" believe they can vote themselves anything they like. Unfortunately I believe we crossed that Rubicon years ago.

There was an interesting question postulated: "Can a liberal be moral?" It is a good question. And can a moral person be liberal, is also a good question. Liberalism in it's inception wasn't immoral. However, just as Constitutional conservatism seems to have been hijacked, so it seems has liberalism (today called progressivism).

Here is a link to an interesting thread I bookmarked a couple of years ago that you might find an interesting read. I know I did. It took me some re-reading to grasp it all, but when I did it was illuminating.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/621855/posts

I enjoy reading your commentary. Keep up the excellent work.

"No man is a good citizen unless he so acts as to show that he actually uses the Ten Commandments, and translates the Golden Rule into his life conduct." --Theodore Roosevelt
"The moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." Noah Webster, compiler of the American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828.
“We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us ... to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” -James Madison
Patrick Henry said "Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom."
"Men are qualified for liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites." --Edmund Burke

A few quotations for your reading pleasure.

A question. Can Conservatives swell their ranks with new non-traditional (not religious) numbers without relinquishing Moral Absolutes?

Moral absolutes are actually almost the same in every monotheist tradition. I am very familiar with the Vedic tradition (the scriptures that are the foundation for what is known as Hinduism) and the moral absolutes that are the foundation of Judaism and Christianity are virtually the same. Even Buddhism which is not theistic still has similar moral precepts. The main difference with Buddhism and Vedic principles and Judeo-Christian principles is that Buddhism and the Vedas place more stress on mercy to all including animals. On sexual morality, honesty, truth telling, respect for elders and so on, they are practically synonymous. The Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the same, even if worded slightly differently.

But for people who accept no transcendent traditional morality? It's every man for himself.

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