What is a Conservative?

Since the 1980’s government has seen a massive resurgence of politicians who identify themselves as Conservatives. Reagan seemed to make the term so magical that in some areas of the country it is presently impossible to get elected unless you identify yourself as a conservative. Let’s see if we can define the term Conservative.

Conservative- of or relating to a philosophy of Conservatism which is further defined as follows: tending or disposing to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions. This seems a reasonable definition as Conservatives are generally resistant to changes in recognized norms. Much of the present Conservative movement is built around this basic principle. Conservatives usually want to maintain present conditions or else revert to past conditions. In either case it is a philosophy desiring very slow and gradual change and highly resistant to new ideas in most cases.

Let’s take a look at how this movement has operated throughout US history. We could go further back and follow it through world history but for the sake of brevity I will try to hold this discussion to US history. I’ll start with the birth of this country as a sovereign nation, the American Revolution.

Conservatives in the colonies were overwhelmingly against the revolution. As usual in such dynamics the Conservative movement wanted to maintain the status quo. At that time in our history wealth was the common denominator of the ruling class. People without wealth were not allowed to vote and therefore were usually kept from holding office in any form. The Conservative movement looked in horror upon the idea of universal suffrage which it equated with rule by the mob. The leaders of Conservatism in Great Britain most strongly vociferated this belief in speeches wherein they exclaimed that rule by the wealthy was in fact the natural order of things. Aristocrats would always rule over everyone else and it was the duty of the poor to obey their betters. It was unnatural for them to rebel against the rightful king and would lead to anarchy. Conservatives within the colonies echoed these positions and clung tightly to the monarchy, refusing to entertain the ridiculous idea that common people might have the intelligence to rule themselves.

Thankfully, Conservatives in the colonies lost this battle both figuratively and militarily and a nation was born on the principle that all men are created equal. It is worth remembering this was not a conservative principle but rather a radical idea pushed and forcibly upheld by the most progressive men in the colonies, a group we today tend to identify as our founding fathers.

In 1860, the United States found itself literally torn in two over the question of the spread of African slavery into the new territories. Conservative Democrats, determined to protect the source of their wealth, insisted on the right to carry their most valuable assets (slaves) into the new territories. The Conservative party in the north had sided with Conservative Democrats for much of the preceding 40 years as arguments over slavery rocked the halls of Congress over and over again. When the nation elected a Republican president pledged to oppose the further spread of slavery, southern states immediately called for secession conventions to consider whether they should withdraw from the Union.

Without getting bogged down in too many details it was the Conservative movement within the Democratic Party that walked out of their nominating convention and split the party. It was the Conservative members of the US Supreme court who decided that it was impossible for a black man to become a US citizen. It was the Conservative movement in US religious institutions that split these institutions by their insistence that the black man was not only not endowed with the requisite intelligence to become a citizen, he was intended to be a slave as a part of God’s plan.

Later, it was the Conservative movement within Congress that battled against the passage of the 13th and 14th amendments which gave blacks their freedom and their citizenship. It was the Conservative movement in the South that later put in force literacy tests and other qualification tests in order to remove the black man’s right to vote. It was the Conservative movement in the south that put in place Jim Crow laws throughout the south that removed many of the basic rights that black men had gained through these same amendments with legislation carefully crafted to keep them separate in every way possible.

It was the Conservative members of Congress from both parties who fought hard against the Civil Rights Act in the sixties that removed these same restrictions. It was the Conservative movements within the state governments that railed against segregation and refused to follow federal laws removing these restrictions.

In the early part of this century it was the Conservative movement within both parties that rallied against the passage of the 19th amendment that gave women the right to vote. It was the Conservative movement within existing religious denominations that pushed against this same principle throughout the US pointing out their belief that the Bible placed woman in a subservient position. It was this same Conservative movement that argued that women weren’t intellectually capable of making such important decisions as they were designed by God without this requisite intelligence. It is the Ultra Conservative movement even today that suggests that suffrage rights to women is at the source of much of what is wrong in this country today.

Also in the early part of this century it was the Conservative movement within this country that lobbied strongly for the continuation of child labor in factories and against the rights of organization of labor unions; labor unions that were later instrumental in passing legislation against the harsh realities of child labor over the loud protestations of this same Conservative movement. It was the Conservative movement within this country that organized against 40 hour work weeks, overtime benefits and minimum wage standards claiming they would collapse the economy and bring about economic devastation if put in place.

It was the Conservative movement that fought tooth and nail against the Social Security Act which provided old age pension, survivors benefits for victims of work related accidents, aid for orphans, widows, and disabled people as well as rudimentary unemployment insurance. Conservatives warned that these ideas were the first steps in a long slide towards communism and concentration camps.

It was the Conservative movement that opposed Medicare with the help of their paid shill Ronald Reagan who advised that it was be the end of freedom on this country as we know it. Medicare that allows Senior citizens to obtain the healthcare they need in their declining years was equated again with the first step in a slide towards dictators and the absolute ruination of our healthcare system.

It was the Conservative movement that fought against the creation of air and clean water standards that guarantee corporate entities can’t poison our water systems and pollute the environment without paying for cleanups. It is the Conservative movement which still today fights against any efforts to enforce these regulations and regularly lobbies and control elections with massive political contributions aimed at making sure they can continue to pollute without financial responsibility for the problems they cause.

I am often baffled when I hear people proudly proclaim they are Conservative. Obviously, being a Conservative means different things to different people and I know a lot of Conservatives who simply want more gradual change and slower, less jarring upsets to our system. Nevertheless, the history of Conservatism in this country is not one that I want to be identified with. I really can’t understand why anyone else would.

Blind Hypocrisy

Republican primary presidential candidate Ben Carson recently started a minor firestorm of public opinion when he suggested that he would not “advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” Naturally, such a biased statement seeming to denigrate a whole religion put some people on edge. Carson, in a later interview, went on to further clarify his views with the following statement: “I do not believe Sharia is consistent with the Constitution of this country,” Carson said, referencing that Islamic law is derived from the Koran and traditions of Islam. “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.”

I happen to agree with most of this statement. The President, and many other elected officials take an oath upon entering office to support and follow the US Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Any religious beliefs that would tend to force someone in such an office to ignore and violate the provisions of the US Constitution must be set aside in favor of following the US Constitution.

Carson later stated, “Anyone who is running for president should embrace the Constitution and should place it above their personal beliefs,” he remarked. “Anyone who can’t do that should not be running for the presidency.” I completely agree with this statement. Hooray for his ability to understand this as a basic qualification for running for the office. Unfortunately, Carson and several other Republican candidates have a form of severe myopia when it comes to understanding the import of this statement.

Just a few short weeks ago we in this country were faced with the spectacle of a county court clerk in Kentucky who refused to follow the ruling of the Supreme Court of the land that said that she must issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. The clerk, Kim Davis, was eventually jailed for a week for contempt of court in refusing to follow this ruling because she felt it went against her personal religious beliefs. In other words, we have experienced a clear cut case where a duly elected official refused to follow a ruling based upon the same US Constitution that Carson insists must be placed above a public servant's personal beliefs.

Instead of a hypothetical case where a Muslim might be tempted to violate the Constitution in favor of their religious belief we have a real life situation where a Christian did violate the Constitution in favor of her religious belief. Carson could not have spelled this out any clearer. It is exactly that situation he described above only it is a Christian refusing to follow the Constitution instead of a Muslim putting their personal belief system above the law of the land.

As it turns out Carson has commented on the case in Kentucky in very concise terms. Unfortunately, his comments directly oppose his statements about Muslims and their belief system. When asked about the Kim Davis case and her right to refuse to follow the Constitution he responded with the following: “But this is a very basic right. This is a Judeo-Christian nation in the sense that a lot of our values and principles are based on our Judeo-Christian faith. There are substantial numbers of people who actually believe in the traditional definition of marriage,” he said. “I’m one of them. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think that other people can do whatever they want to do.”

He continued, “And Congress now has a responsibility to step up to the plate and enact legislation that will protect the First Amendment rights of all Americans. That’s the reason that we have divided government. When one branch does something that tilts the balance, the other branches need to pitch in and correct the situation. This is a serious problem.”

In the first place, no one’s First Amendment rights endow them with the right to deny rights to other people; no matter if they believe their faith demands they do so or not. As Carson rightly stated before, the Constitution of the supreme law of the land and it has to come before someone’s personal beliefs if they are to hold public office in this country. Unfortunately, Carson doesn’t seem to recognize this includes his and Mrs. Davis’ Christian beliefs. Make no mistake about it, the Supreme Court ruling was based directly on the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, the supreme law of the land. Neither Carson, Davis, nor any of the multitude of Republican candidates who have since come out in favor of Mrs. Davis’ decision to flout that Constitution in favor of her own personal belief system seem to understand the hypocrisy inherent in believing Christian beliefs should trump the US Constitution.

In the second place, a basic understanding of 7th grade civics should also be a requirement for someone to run the US government as President and Mr. Carson seems sadly deficient in his understanding of how our government actually functions. Congress does not the authority or responsibility to enact legislation to overrule the Supreme Court’s rulings on the US Constitution. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the Supreme Court is the body which rules on interpretations of the US Constitution. While most 7th graders understand this principle and therefore understand that the only way to change the US Constitution is by the amendment rules within the Constitution, Carson thinks Congress should “pitch in to correct the situation.”

Of course none of this should come as too much of a surprise when it comes to Ben Carson. Carson severely castigated Planned Parenthood for selling fetal tissue when that particular scandal was in vogue amongst Conservatives. He didn’t seem to understand that hypocrisy of such a statement coming from someone who had personally used such fetal tissue in his own research projects earlier in his career. Carson seems to commonly be unable to see where his stated positions contradict his personal activities or where his high flying rhetoric about Muslims contradicts his own statements about Judeo-Christian values.

If one is to believe Carson is right that people who cannot place the US Constitution above their own personal belief system should not be running for the presidency we seem to have several other Republican candidates who have recently failed this test as well. When the events surrounding Kim Davis’ incarceration for refusing to follow the Constitution in carrying out her duties came to light there was no shortage of indignant Republican Candidates supporting her right to put her religious beliefs above the Constitution.

Rick Santorum postulated the following: “Martin Luther King wrote a letter from Birmingham jail and said in that letter that there are just laws and unjust laws and we have no obligation to condone and accept unjust laws. And then he followed that up and said what is an unjust law. An unjust law is a law that goes against the moral code or God’s law or the natural law. I would argue that what the Supreme Court did is against natural law, God’s law and we have ever obligation to stand in opposition to it.”

It would be hard to find someone more clearly expressing their belief that their religious beliefs should supersede the US Constitution than this but other Republicans seem to be trying to do so.

Mike Huckabee, another Republican candidate, went even further: “If someone needs to go to jail, I am willing to go in her place, and I mean that.” Imagine the spectacle of a US president refusing to follow a ruling of the US Supreme court and instead demanding to go to jail because their religious beliefs so far outweigh their conviction that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land.

Ted Cruz had the following to say on the subject: “I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama Administration is trying to force to choose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion.” Senator Cruz, a highly educated lawyer, is surely spouting rhetoric. Again, 7th graders understand the difference between “a lawless court opinion” on the US Constitution and a duly considered opinion rendered by the final arbiter of Constitutional law in our system of governance. Cruz surely knows the difference in what “the Obama administration” wants and what the US Supreme court has duly decided. Never one to let the truth interfere with what he wants to project to voters, Cruz has once again proved himself to be wholly devoid of integrity with this statement.

Marco Rubio also weighed in on Mrs. Davis’ right to somehow refuse to do her sworn duty and uphold the Constitution. “We should seek a balance between government’s responsibility to abide by the laws of our republic and allowing people to stand by their religious convictions,” Mr. Rubio said. “While the clerk’s office has a governmental duty to carry out the law,” he added, “there should be a way to protect the religious freedom and conscience rights of individuals working in the office.”

It is unusual to find someone so easily fluid in speaking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time as Mr. Rubio. His ability to support both sides while ignoring the reality that Mrs. Davis is required to follow the law as the arm of the government charged with issuing these licenses. Either she issues the licenses or the law is ignored in favor of her own personal religious beliefs. There is no other solution no matter how skillfully Mr. Rubio avoids the question.

All US Presidents are required by the US Constitution to take the following oath before taking office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Carson is right about one thing. There is no exception to this oath such as “unless my religious convictions conflict with the Constitution.” Unfortunately, neither he nor any of the Republican candidates seem to understand the import of this oath. I would suggest that the statements above concerning Kim Davis effectively disqualifies all of them from eligibility for the office according to Carson’s own logic.

Confusion about Liberty

I have been watching with a kind of fascinated incredulousness the situation in Rowan County Kentucky wherein the Court Clerk refuses to issue marriage licenses in protest of the recent Supreme Court decision regarding gay marriage. The same thing is happening in several counties in Alabama where they had simply decided not to issue any marriage licenses in the hope that this will forestall the eventuality of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

Unfortunately for Kim Davis, the Court Clerk in Rowan County Kentucky, there have been lawsuits filed to force her to issue such licenses. Mrs. Davis, who has been married four times herself, has taken it upon herself to fight this issue in court rather than follow the ruling. Mrs. Davis issued the following statement through her lawyers:

I have worked in the Rowan County Clerk’s office for 27 years as a Deputy Clerk and was honored to be elected as the Clerk in November 2014, and took office in January 2015. I love my job and the people of Rowan County. I have never lived any place other than Rowan County. Some people have said I should resign, but I have done my job well. This year we are on track to generate a surplus for the county of 1.5 million dollars.

In addition to my desire to serve the people of Rowan County, I owe my life to Jesus Christ who loves me and gave His life for me. Following the death of my godly mother-in-law over four years ago, I went to church to fulfill her dying wish. There I heard a message of grace and forgiveness and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I am not perfect. No one is. But I am forgiven and I love my Lord and must be obedient to Him and to the Word of God.

I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage. To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision. For me it is a decision of obedience. I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God’s Word. It is a matter of religious liberty, which is protected under the First Amendment, the Kentucky Constitution, and in the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Our history is filled with accommodations for people’s religious freedom and conscience. I want to continue to perform my duties, but I also am requesting what our Founders envisioned – that conscience and religious freedom would be protected. That is all I am asking. I never sought to be in this position, and I would much rather not have been placed in this position. I have received death threats from people who do not know me. I harbor nothing against them. I was elected by the people to serve as the County Clerk. I intend to continue to serve the people of Rowan County, but I cannot violate my conscience.

Mrs. Davis obviously has deep convictions on the subject of gay marriage and strongly believes that her religion requires her not to participate in sanctioning such a marriage. Personally, I have no problem with her conviction and feel that she has every right not to participate in something that she feels would signify her disobedience to her chosen god. However, if she no longer feels that she can carry out the duties of her position as a servant of the county she should simply resign from her office. She is perfectly free to do so. What she has no right to do is project her own personal religious beliefs into her position as a servant of the people of Rowan County in contravention of established law. Make no mistake about it, it is now established law that she must issue such licenses if the people of Rowan County ask her to do so in spite of her personal religious beliefs. An appeals court has so ruled and the Supreme Court of the United States has also so ruled.

Mrs. Davis seems terribly confused about one thing though, the idea of religious liberty. Religious is defined as relating to or believing in a religion. Religion is defined as the service of or worship of God or the supernatural. It is further defined as a personal or institutionalized set of attitudes, beliefs, or practices. In this particular instance this last definition seems to most accurately describe Mrs. Davis’ idea about her religious duty when she describes her belief that the First Amendment, the Kentucky Constitution, and/or the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act allows her to choose to follow God’s word instead of the laws of the government she is currently in the employ of. She further goes on to state that our founders wanted conscience and religious freedom to be protected.

Perhaps there is good reason for her confusion as the term Religious Liberty is something of an oxymoron to begin with. Liberty is defined as the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views. Organized religion is an institutionalized set of attitudes, beliefs or practices. Therefore, Religious Liberty is by definition a combination of two words that are antithetical to each other in meaning. It is quite literally impossible to be free from restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life or behavior while following an institutionalized set of attitudes, beliefs, or practices.

Mrs. Davis ironically misses the truth that she is in fact by definition denying other people’s liberty by her misunderstanding of the terms she used in her statement. Her actions are themselves the very definition of oppressive restrictions imposed on one’s way of life. Her decision to violate law and refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay people because her narrow ideas of what serving her god demand is logical proof that she neither understands the definition of liberty nor deserves the cover of hiding behind it.

Liberty is also defined as the power or scope to act as one pleases. Obviously, the liberty to act as one pleases extends only so far as the point where these actions interfere with someone else’s liberty. Neither the First Amendment nor any of the rights called out in the Bill of Rights are correctly construed so as to restrict the rights of other people. In other words, they are personal rights aimed at allowing and expanding personal freedom. They were never intended to be used as weapons or shields behind which one could hide in order to restrict or inhibit the rights of other people.

While Mrs. Davis position is untenable in the extreme, we seem to suddenly be besieged by religious based groups demanding that it is a religious liberty for them to be able to deny rights to people whose lifestyle they find offensive. Any suggestion that liberty contains within it such a right is a blatantly obvious proof that someone doesn’t understand the term to begin with.

In April of 1864 Abraham Lincoln gave a speech to the Maryland Sanitary Fair in Baltimore, Maryland. The following passage of that speech accurately describes this same confusion on a subject around which a similar argument about liberty sprang up; the liberty to enslave others:

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in the same word we do not mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name…. liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names…. Liberty and Tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.

Lincoln was dead on in 1864 with his philosophical thoughts on liberty. They are no less true today. At some time in the future we will look back with horror and revulsion on the idea that one group of people with religious convictions should, in the name of liberty, have the temerity to restrict the basic rights of another group because they have a different sexual orientation. This will be the same kind of revulsion we currently feel looking back at a society in Lincoln's day determined to go to war to protect the liberty to own other human beings.