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A Better Definition of Who is a Conservative

By: Morton C. Blackwell (Diary)  |  December 13th, 2010 at 10:12 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The most important political development of the just-concluded election cycle is the enormously effective, new, political involvement of grassroots conservatives through the Tea Party groups and other, major, analogous organizations.

My Leadership Institute has trained newly active conservatives in partnership with every one of these major groups.  My staff and I therefore probably understand all these groups as well or better than anyone else.

If these groups continue active and growing, the 2012 elections will go much as the 2010 elections did.

If newly empowered Republicans are seen to keep the faith with the grassroots conservatives who elected them, these new activists will stay involved and prove decisive again in two years.

If not, the grassroots will turn against them with a vengeance.

After many years in which being considered a conservative was often a path to winning elections, many content-free politicians have found it in their interest to campaign as conservatives.

For movement-oriented conservatives, that’s a problem of success.  I’d rather have the problems of success than the problems of failure, but problems of success are nonetheless real.

Since the November 2010 elections, Republican leaders have missed opportunities to show that they really learned the lessons they say they have learned.  The raising of Congressmen Fred Upton and Hal Rogers to important House committee chairs looks like business as usual.  There were much better alternatives.

We can expect many such important tests in the next few weeks and months.

In this era when claiming to be a conservative can be a pathway to power for opportunists, we must better define who is truly a conservative.

I suggest this criterion:  Conservatives are people who do more for conservative principles than they think they absolutely have to do.  Only meeting such a standard will sustain the enthusiasm of the millions of grassroots conservatives who emerged politically in 2010.

Even Barack Obama acts on conservative principles when he thinks he absolutely has to.  That does not make him a conservative.

COMMENTS

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  • Locke

    It is perhaps pretty good as a criterion for whom conservatives can support.

    A good conservative should always be raising the bar – as a minimum requirement, he should be more conservative than his constituents. I think this is a related criterion, but it has the advantage of being less subjective.

    When you speak of doing “more for conservative principles” and I speak of being “more conservative”, I think we mean the same about the same. Words mean little unless they persuade people of the value of conservative principles, so for me being conservative means advancing conservative objectives, not just talking conservative.

  • http://wncconservatives.ning.com Thunder Pig

    Most people who call themselves conservatives don’t know what conservatism is, nor have they read about the philosophy beyond bumper sticker politics or campaign slogans or watched videos of charismatics who call themselves conservative…

    I suggest that people check out Dr Russell Kirk’s Ten Conservative Principles at http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html

    and that they pick up a few books and read them from cover to cover.

    Here are a few titles to Google:

    “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot” by Russell Kirk

    “The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945″ by George Nash

    “God and Man at Yale” by Wm F Buckley

    “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers

    and also to read all 85 essays in the Federalist Papers…these will give a person more grounding in conservative thought than 99% of everyone else who call themselves conservative and probably every elected Republican in both Houses of Congress.

    I’ve chosen the older stuff because most of the newer books and essays are watered down and written on a 6th grade level. The pieces I’ve listed above contain meat.

  • flashlightmatches

    Much of what ails America today can be traced to the loss of a connection to the past and a dismissal of tradition. This disassociation from our heritage stems in large part from a neglect of books. In order to reclaim our traditions, we must restore the primacy of good books ? books which reflect truth and beauty, and which encourage the virtue that strengthens the roots of our American order. As Russell Kirk once wrote, sound books about the human condition and about civil social order can arouse a healthy intellectual reaction to preserve order, justice, and freedom.