The future of conservatism

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ^ | Sunday, June 19, 2005 | Colin McNickle

[Willie Green]

A brief and steamy walk on the streets of Pittsburgh with the chairman of the Republican National Committee succinctly affirmed what affliction has stricken many of today's conservatives:

They don't know what conservatism is.

It was on the evening of June 9 that a behind-schedule but very gracious Ken Mehlman and I took a brisk stroll from one political fundraiser to another. "What's the future of conservatism?" I asked.

[hosepipe]

"A government that is big enough to give you all you need is big enough to take it all away" -Barry M. Goldwater

" I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."- Barry M. Goldwater

"The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government."- Barry M. Goldwater

"Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism"- Barry M. Goldwater

[backtothestreets]

The growth in government spending reminds me of the statement by President Calvin Coolidge, "After all, the chief business of the American people is business". Forgotten from this speech was another statement, "Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence".

This speech, "The Press Under a Free Government" addressed the relationship of the press in a free society. I wonder how President Coolidge would comment on such subjects as the size of government, government spending, government deficits and illegal immigration, all of which benefit some interests today. He held some principles in higher regard than the accumulation of wealth.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

A fine theory, but not one of the actual choices facing conservatives.

[nosofar]

Author is hoping the conservatives get as rabid as the liberals are now so the libs will stop looking like such drooling morons.

I guess that's the important thing anyway, how liberals look? /s

[nosofar]

I agree with this point, but would say it differently.

I disagree. I see conservatism as an acceptance of our limitations and an acknoslwedgment that the insitutions and values evolved over many generations will normally be superior to those that are designed for us by people professing some great insight into humanity.

[RightWingAtheist]

I don't agree. I think conservatism is about looking at the world as it actually is, and not as we wish it were. It's about realism, not idealism, something which goes back to Edmund Burke's warnings about the overreliance on abstract thought in politics, and Kirk's assertion that conservatism is fundamentally anti-ideology.

[nosofar]

This is an untrue statement. Conservatives arent the beneficiaries of the welfare state as liberals are. Thus there is no reason to think they will be competeting for resources from the federal govt.

I think he's saying conservatives today are more prone to use big government to enact policies than before and so are competing with liberals to get programs passed instead of trying to reduce government. These programs might be based on conservative principles, but it's still bit government.

[infidel29]

...the insitutions and values evolved over many generations will normally be superior to those that are designed for us by people professing some great insight into humanity.

Those who are professing insight into humanity and designing values for Americans today are liberals and the intelligentsia who are practicing cultural Marxism. I don't find these "values" to be superior to the ones my parents and grandparents were taught. True values do not evolve, they are constant and stand up to time.

"There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality. All else is immorality." --Theodore Roosevelt

[infidel29]

...I think conservatism is about looking at the world as it actually is, and not as we wish it were...and Kirk's assertion that conservatism is fundamentally anti-ideology.

By your own quote you contradict Kirk from the article. The root of conservatism is conserve, save, maintain. To maintain a particular lifestyle. In these changing times where liberalism is turning the Nation a direction people don't want to go, it is natural to fight that change, to fight for a way of life. That isn't idealism, it's action. ...from the article...

Indeed it was Mr. Kirk, the great 20th century American essayist and chronicler of conservatism, who offered the "genius of conservatism" axiom. "Conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma, and conservatives inherit from Burke" (the 18th century Irish statesman and philosopher) "a talent for re-expressing their convictions to fit the times." Or as Heritage Foundation President Edwin J. Feulner put it in a recently updated foreword to "The Conscience of a Conservative," the classic 1960 treatise of Barry Goldwater (ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell): Conservatism is "a vision of the nation and the world as it should be, not a compromise with the world as it" is.

[afnamvet]

With all due respect to Ken Mehlman, conservatism in its current form is a pale imitation of what it once was, if conservatism at all. And if today's Republicans truly want to make their mark in service to our founding precepts, they'll reject liberalism-lite and return to the Goldwater standard.

That's a BIG "if".

[Eagles Talon IV]

"I guess that's the important thing anyway, how liberals look? /s"

It sure is to the Democrats.