maxparrish
03-07-2007, 11:50 PM
After listening to most of Tancredo's video it prompts me to ask - what the heck happened to real conservatism? Tancredo was quite right, they started "hyphenating" the label as if it were an embarrassment - George Bush the first started it with his stupid "kinder, gentler" conservatism, followed by George Bush the second's discovery of "compassionate conservatism" - in the meantime the left was busy attacking the 'evil' sinister Zionist "neo"-conservatism and Pat Buchanan's "paleo-conservatism" derailed itself over fear of free trade, Jews, and foreign interventionism.
At one time conservatism was a single strand, a core ideology that may have had slightly different flavors but all of them were based on on a unified understanding of human nature and economics. Among those understandings were:
- The state (government) is, at best, a necessary evil - at worst, the only human institution capable of destroying our liberties.
- Political freedom is not possible without a free economy.
- The free market and capitalism are the most productive means to human improvement and well-being ever known, and its basis is in natural rights liberty and the free choice of the individual. Without it, we are slaves.
- Government is antithetical to freedom, a succubus upon the productive energies of a people, an abusive force often used by elite minorities to "design" human society and its agents for their totalitarian society agendas.
- America, as an ideal, has been the land of freedom, the providential promise of God's City on a Hill that embraced the common man, freedom of the individual, merit and the self-made man, and international protector of free Republics. To conservatives these ideals were one coherent concept - liberty, individualism, freedom, capitalism, exceptionalism and patriotism.
Conservatives were people that saw all these connections as coming from its understanding about human nature - that when men were left alone to work in their own self-interests, they also work in societies interests. The strongest society's were those formed by mutual and voluntary relationships, not the "collectivized" society of the Soviet Union (that failed once the binding force of fear was removed).
This is some of what all conservatives, of any stripe, once believed:
- A strong defense whose first priority was our protecting national interests and our security. And when forced to war, only massive and uncompromising force to assure victory was the appropriate moral response to a provocation.
- A smaller, leaner, federal government. Lower, flatter, and simplified taxes without special deductions.
- Federalism and State's Rights: local control of education and taxes. Local control of welfare and moral issues. Ending the departments of energy and education.
- Serious border security. A limited and selective immigration in order to meet the needs of our fellow Americans, not to meet the needs of failing third world governments.
- Free trade, low regulations, and the right of contract.
- Equality before the law, including REAL equality without gender, racial, or ethnic "points" and quotas for jobs and education benefits.
- Individual responsibility. Government was not your nanny, your retirement system, your medical system, or your provider of subsidized housing. Its purpose was not to rob from the fruits of the labors of some, to give it to others as "compensation".
- The Law as written, not as invented by activist judges seeking to impose their social values on society.
YET, I only know of ONE candidate (and one possible candidate) that believes in conservatism: Tancredo and Gingrich. While I would guess that at least an 80% majority of rank and file conservatives believe in ALL of the above, I am perplexed that almost NO high profile conservative leader does.
At one time conservatism was a single strand, a core ideology that may have had slightly different flavors but all of them were based on on a unified understanding of human nature and economics. Among those understandings were:
- The state (government) is, at best, a necessary evil - at worst, the only human institution capable of destroying our liberties.
- Political freedom is not possible without a free economy.
- The free market and capitalism are the most productive means to human improvement and well-being ever known, and its basis is in natural rights liberty and the free choice of the individual. Without it, we are slaves.
- Government is antithetical to freedom, a succubus upon the productive energies of a people, an abusive force often used by elite minorities to "design" human society and its agents for their totalitarian society agendas.
- America, as an ideal, has been the land of freedom, the providential promise of God's City on a Hill that embraced the common man, freedom of the individual, merit and the self-made man, and international protector of free Republics. To conservatives these ideals were one coherent concept - liberty, individualism, freedom, capitalism, exceptionalism and patriotism.
Conservatives were people that saw all these connections as coming from its understanding about human nature - that when men were left alone to work in their own self-interests, they also work in societies interests. The strongest society's were those formed by mutual and voluntary relationships, not the "collectivized" society of the Soviet Union (that failed once the binding force of fear was removed).
This is some of what all conservatives, of any stripe, once believed:
- A strong defense whose first priority was our protecting national interests and our security. And when forced to war, only massive and uncompromising force to assure victory was the appropriate moral response to a provocation.
- A smaller, leaner, federal government. Lower, flatter, and simplified taxes without special deductions.
- Federalism and State's Rights: local control of education and taxes. Local control of welfare and moral issues. Ending the departments of energy and education.
- Serious border security. A limited and selective immigration in order to meet the needs of our fellow Americans, not to meet the needs of failing third world governments.
- Free trade, low regulations, and the right of contract.
- Equality before the law, including REAL equality without gender, racial, or ethnic "points" and quotas for jobs and education benefits.
- Individual responsibility. Government was not your nanny, your retirement system, your medical system, or your provider of subsidized housing. Its purpose was not to rob from the fruits of the labors of some, to give it to others as "compensation".
- The Law as written, not as invented by activist judges seeking to impose their social values on society.
YET, I only know of ONE candidate (and one possible candidate) that believes in conservatism: Tancredo and Gingrich. While I would guess that at least an 80% majority of rank and file conservatives believe in ALL of the above, I am perplexed that almost NO high profile conservative leader does.