I like your proposed GOP platform, and agree that it is at point 3 where the big debates get started.
How one interprets the extent of the “no nanny state” idea hinges entirely upon how one prioritizes corporate versus individual rights.
When we recognize that certain unalienable rights are our heritage from our Creator, and establish a government with the principle function of preserving those rights for us and our posterity, there are consequences; corporate and individual, and sometimes that means an individual cannot limitlessly indulge their particular pursuit of happiness. Often, in deference to the corporate body, We cannot just go and do as we please. We rightly bar the axe murderer from his pursuit of homicidal happiness because the value of human life always trumps the value of happiness. We rightly paint lines on the pavement, plant “STOP” signs, and enforce speed limits — all controls on individual behavior — because it promotes a higher level of social order that more greatly benefits the corporate body.
There are myriad daily examples of the implementation of this basic principle: the good of many can trump the good of the few, but the just application of that principle rides on the answer to the question, “When?”
The answer to that question is just this simple: The good of the many trumps the good of the one when a higher value is given its place above a lower value.
For example, life trumps happiness. [Or you could substitute the liberal buzzword “choice”; it’s true either way.]
Whether a state is being a “nanny”, then, depends upon individuals sharing a set of properly ordered priorities. If the state is recognizing values in order of priority, then legislation does not constitute the state playing “nanny”, so laws seeking to outlaw abortion are not “nanny” laws because they rightly order the value of life over the value of happiness. Laws against suicide are not “nanny” laws because they rightly order the value of life over the value of happiness.
The place where the difficulty arises is in making a determination as to what priorities there are, and in what order they ought to be placed. Our founders didn’t have that problem, really, steeped as they were in Judeo-Christian civilization. Today, in what is, arguably, a post-Christian world, we have a really tough time with that. Still, I think we could do FAR worse than to subjugate our individual desires to a recognition of the Founders’ value set and adopt those priorities as our national priorities in the same way that we adopt the Declaration and the Constitution for ourselves as Americans.
There’s a place where ascribing value to those founding documents necessitates an individual subscription to the values and priorities upon which those documents rest, and that is the place where we look at ourselves in the bathroom mirror and decide whether we are Americans or Individualists living in America; whether the Founders’ priorities will be ours, also, or whether we will set them aside in favor of our own.
Really, this all boils down to the outcome of our individual struggle with human selfishness. Can we overcome it and embrace the Founders views, or will we succumb, and create an America in our own image?
We can’t have it both ways; we’ve got to choose.
Obviously, if we each choose the selfish path, we could have as many “American Ideals” as there are Americans, except that we wouldn’t be Americans, then, would we; we’d just be individuals living in an area geographically defined as “America”.
No, “being American” has to be more than simply wrapping ourselves in the flag, reciting the preamble to the Constitution, and rereading the Declaration now and again. It has to involve a subjugation of our selves and our priorities to a set of ideals expressed by those who crafted the founding documents and recorded them there with the intent that future generations — including us — would cherish and preserve them. To the extent that we reject their priorities, we reject our flag, our Constitution, the Declaration, and the Foundation upon which it all rests. We reject the Republic, itself.
The fear is, I think, that people would forfeit their individual direction in life if they adopt priorities that aren’t their ‘native’ priorities. I disagree, and it goes back to “the good of the many trumps the good of the one”. Like lines on the pavement, “STOP” signs, and speed limits — which we all share out there on the roads — a similarly shared set of priorities and values serve to promote a greater social order than can possibly be achieved if we selfishly cling each to our own personal priorities. The fallout is a far more satisfied, productive, and healthy society.
The disastrous alternative — each of us adhering to an individual priority set — would be the social equivalent of erasing all of the lines from the pavement, uprooting the “STOP” signs, and taking down the speed limit signs.
Nobody wins in that environment but the carrion beasts: the trial lawyers, towing companies, and undertakers.
Despite the required limitations on individual behavior, in deference to “the good of the many” hardcore Conservatives will always seek to embrace and implement the Founders’ priorities and values, as expressed in the Declaration and Constitution, because that is what will produce the best possible outcome for The Republic as a whole.
Everyone else in the political arena, then, is expressing the desire to reorder the Founders’ priorities, to some degree or another; ranging from slightly to totally, which represents a foundational disagreement with the nature of The Republic itself; a desire to have a different America than what the Founders established.
What people seem oblivious to is that America cannot be redefined much at all before it will no longer be America. If we pursue our selfish adherence to values and priorities the Founders never conceived of, we will one day awaken to a nation that no longer resembles the Founders’ vision; it will no longer be America, and The Republic will have, at last, been subsumed by the selfishness of the governed.
I am a hardcore Conservative, for the precise reason that I value preservation of the Founders’ Republic above adherence to my self-conceived priorities; that I best support the Republic by embracing and upholding the priorities upon which it rests. Whether they align with my own or not is entirely irrelevant.
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A sidebar interest in all of this — and this “goes macro” with this discussion — is the observation that so much energy is put into bashing hardline conservatives for things like opposing abortion — as if all there is to human life is whether or not we get to destroy our unborn — when there’s a universe filled with liberty and freedom that’s there for the taking. Does anyone take note of it?? No, they’re embroiled in their diatribe and rhetoric, scratching and clawing to preserve access to their favorite blood ritual.
When you stop to think about it, it’s weird, isn’t it?
I mean, people could go hiking in Patagonia, ski the Swiss Alps, ride a helicopter into the Grand Canyon, raft down the raging Colorado River, fish the morning “rise” on a calm, crystal blue Sierra lake, drive old Route 66, sail a yacht to Hawaii, build homes for the poor, plant trees, convert their hot water system to solar, change careers, start a business, a million plus fulfilling adventures...
What DO you want to do, today??
Pick an answer — any answer — just, please, make it something OTHER than “campaign for the right to kill the unborn”.
And, what answer to they pick???
“Uh, lemme get back to you; I gotta go to a Planned Parenthood rally.”
~~~ Aaaaaaahhh!! ~~~
It’s enough to make you wanna yank out all your hair by the roots!
I appreciate your very thoughtful reply.
As a woman — and a feminist from way back — I can understand the development of the pro-choice position. In some respects, I consider myself pro-choice on libertarian grounds. (Although I also think the abortion question should be decided by the people of the respective states, not judges.)
The need for women to control their own fertility arises out of the drive by women to participate fully in modern society. The problem, of course, is that the birth control movement in this country took its direction from the radical Margaret Sanger. Following her lead, it still insists on absolute rights without responsibility — when every sensible person knows that pregnancy is all about responsibilities. Another case of warped values, courtesy of utopian socialism.