(BBQ, sorry I didn’t finish in one sitting.)

Remember that the word ‘conservatism’ is relative. A conservative in Absolutist Europe would be bad by our standards. A conservative in Britain is largely a liberal here.

I have a collection of Reagan’s speeches with rhetorical analyses. It’s interesting. I notice that Reagan didn’t speak much in terms of conservatism. Rather, he talked about what made us Americans. OF course, he was talking what we would call ‘conservative’ values. But he did it in such a way that no one felt excluded, and also in such a way that if anyone attacked him for his views, they came off looking like major league jerks. Our current crop of ‘conservatives’ in office and in candidacy could learn a lot from this approach.

When I look at what now all too often passes for conservatism, I notice it has two features:

1. It claims to embody what makes America great;
2. It ignores or doesn’t sufficiently address what actually made our country great.

The line goes that economic freedom and government staying out of our lives made this country great.

That sounds nice and is absolutely, blatantly wrong.

Those things followed from what really made this country great.

Go back to America’s 2 most important founding documents, the DOI and the Constitution. The Constitution is the ‘how’ of our country, the DOI is the ‘why’. The DOI is most important.

These words express the real secret to America’s greatness:

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’

We quote this all the time. Heck, the conservatives I’m gently chiding quote them.. But how often do we think of their meaning? That sentence is chock full of meaning. Chock full.

‘self-evident’ – obvious to all members of mankind, obviously and intuitively. Where does this awareness come from?

‘CREATED equal’ – equality’s great. But ‘created’? That implies a Creator. And HE decided to make us equal. What man, then, can by his own will, make some more equal than others?

‘endowed by their CREATOR’ – ‘endowed’ – given at birth. Our rights come from God. Without this absolute ground for our rights, they become arbitrary, and dependent on who’s in power. If God doesn’t give us our rights, government does.

‘Life’ – we don’t respect life in this country. Look at the abortion mills, all the child abuse and abuse of women, and how we treat our elderly. Add to that all the violence, and how the killing of people is often made a joke, and ask yourself, what do we really think of the right to Life? And when certain self-described ‘conservatives’ don’t want to mess with the abortion issue, they are shirking the assertion of the fundamental from God mentioned in the DOI for the most helpless members of society. What does that bode for us?

‘Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ – this is the part most often focused on by the folks I’m talking about. ‘Liberty’ does not equate with living in a libertine fashion. It gets back to the basic idea that self-governance is a pre-requisite to a free society. Without it, societies inevitably fall into chaos and then bondage. Many make the argument that you cannot legislate morality. But all laws are embodiments of some moral. Some argue that we should live and let live. While it is true we cannot force our neighbor to be good, our collective opinion is good for something. This is how peer pressure and societal pressure work. To abdicate this responsbility to admonish people that they should live right is to (unwittingly) lay the foundation for the end of a free society. Self-governance occurs at the individual level, but it also occurs at the community level. In addition to holding ourselves accountable, we should be holding each other accountable. Remember those rights coming from God? Well, that’s part of an order that includes obligation. God gives rights, but expects certain things in return. You cannot break His law. You can transgress it, but it will break YOU. Ignore God, and He’ll take that freedom He gives you by giving you over to a reprobate mind. We see this in the economic realm. The more corruption, graft and arrogance you see among business leaders, the more clamor you will hear for government intervention. Again, quit governing yourself and someone else will govern you. This applies to every aspect of life.

‘Conservative’ means to tend towards conserving something. What are we trying to conserve? Material prosperity? Or a unique way of life and society in accord with God’s will? IF we focus purely on prosperity and personal liberty, without focusing on personal responsibility and obligation to God, we chasing after a vain thing. And what we seek will certainly elude us.