Extended Thought: Ten Conservative Principles
After a long self-imposed hiatus I decided it best to come back to public notice bringing forth the great wealth of knowledge & wisdom I possess to the masses. Thus, please find my first missive. CP
"Ten Conservative Principles". It is as good a summary of the conservative mind as can be found anywhere in so short a compass:
"First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it; human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent."
"Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity", not slavishly, for he recognizes room for improvement in all things human, but humbly, for he recognizes also that wisdom grows slowly through ages, and because he prefers the devil he knows to the devil he doesn't know.
"Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription ["that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary"]. Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time."
"Fourth, conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues. Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity" -- or kind intentions.
"Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems.... The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at leveling must lead, at best, to social stagnation."
"Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectibility.... To seek for utopia is to end in disaster.... All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk. By proper attention and prudent reform, we may preserve and improve this tolerable order.... The ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestrial hell."
"Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all."
"Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.... In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily. Some...are carried out by local political bodies, others by private associations: so long as they are kept local, and are marked by the general agreement of those affected, they constitute healthy community. But when these functions pass by default or usurpation to centralized authority, then community is in serious danger."
"Ninth, the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.... A state in which an individual or a small group are able to dominate the wills of their fellows without check is a despotism, whether it is called monarchical or aristocratic or democratic."
"Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.... The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression.... He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old."
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Comments
I tell you I'm conservative. However, I want to use public money/taxpayers money to buy me a stadium/arena. welfare for the rich is good and bad for the poor/needy. Then we will have an unwritten agreement not to acknowledge each other in the liquior store. Then don't even hold me responsible for my offspring being attracted to the same gender. just do as I say and not as I do.
These are ideals for the rest of you to live by and don't apply to me and or my family.
If I understand you correctly you have a big problem of the perceived hypocracy that goes with being a conservative. I believe this is where the public has been sold on the thought that all conservatives fall into the "evangelical republican" category; which is not true. I, for one, am not an evangelical.
The conservative philosophy addresses governments role in society; not religions role. While conservatives do promote "traditional values" this should not mean they are being hypocritical if not followed to the letter. Without certain accepted norms & values in a society ultimately you can lose your national identity.
I'll repost this.
Posted by Gordon
You know, with all the ink and air time spent commenting on Mr. Clinton's real and alleged sexual improprieties, you would think that the "fair and balanced" media would note the avalanche of GOP and right-wing sex crimes and hypocrisy. I mean it's not like they don't think sex sells. Consider, it's all Kobe all the time now.
Just to get this off my chest, let's list the ones I know about. This is not an exhaustive list because I have a job that does not allow me to track all this stuff down. As Jackson Thoreau said, "There are just too many Republican mistresses and not enough hours in the day. Nevertheless,
There's President George Bush accused in a criminal complaint and lawsuit of raping one Margie Denise Schoedinger (who apparently dated Bush years ago when she was a minor) and who is also accused by Tammy Phillips, a former stripper quoted in the National Enquirer in 2000 saying she had an affair with Bush that had ended in 1999. There's the press ignoring extramarital activities by the hypocrites who served on the impeachment committee like Henry Hyde and Bob Barr. And then there's the documented sexual misconduct of Bill Thomas, Bob Livingston, Dick Armey, Dan Burton, Charles Canady, J.C. Watts, Helen Chenoweth, Sue Myrick, Ken Calvert, John Peterson, Dan Crane, Donald Lukens, Jim Gilmore, Scott McInnis and Arlan Stangeland. All Republican hypocrites who attacked Clinton for his affairs and expressed outrage when people put a microscope on their private sexual lives. If you want more, like these randy GOPers, check out the site Congressional Arrest Record.
My favorites are Rep. Helen Chenoweth who, during her 1998 campaign, admitted to a six-year adulterous affair with a married associate but noted that "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it," Rep. Joe Scarborough, and, of course, the Newtster.
Remember the non-stop Gary Condit smear campaign? He admits to an affair with Chandra Levy who, when she goes missing, becomes prima facia evidence of murder, much as Hillary is/was accused of offing Vince Foster. No problem with coverage there. But when a dead woman was found in Congressman Joe Scarborough's office, where was the outrage and the non-stop coverage? Now Joe holds forth on his own MSNBC show, lecturing us about the crimes of the Democrats and the bleating the GOP party line.
That paragon of virtue Newt Gingrich is on his third 3 wife now. (God, I don't mean literally, I hope. That image is just too much too imagine.) Gingrich campaign worker Anne Manning admitted that she gave Newt oral sex while he was still married to his first wife. She told Vanity Fair, "we had oral sex. He prefers that because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" Well, where else did we hear that, I wonder. Meanwhile, he dumps his first wife during a visit to the hospital where she is recovering from surgery for breast cancer. Famously, he attributed Susan Smith's drowning of her children as being due to our "sick system" fostered by the "amoralty" of the Democrats in the White House and then said, "the only way to make it better is to vote Republican."
Compassionate. Conservative.
But let's not confine ourselves to Congressional Republicans. While we're on the subject of Susan Smith, let's flesh out that story.
Then there's Richard Delgaudio. This prominent GOP activist and Bush Pioneer fund-raiser is the head of an array of conservative activist groups. The compassionate conservative helped out a 16-year-old girl who had a baby and dropped out of school, who needed money. Delgaudio paid her for pornographic photo sessions. But then, he continued to raise money without the embarrassment of newspaper stories or non-stop TV coverage from November, 2001, when he was first arrested, until April 23 when he was sentenced after pleading guilty to child pornography.
These GOP leaders seem to have something for pre-pubescent girls. Parker J. Bena, a Virginia GOP activist and Bush elector was indicted and convicted in 2001 for possessing child pornography. Kevin Coan, GOP election official in St. Louis, who found time from altering votes during the 200 election to solicit sex from a 14-year-old girl on the internet. Let's also point out Philip Giordano, the former GOP mayor of Waterbury, who was sentenced to 37 years in prison for soliciting sex with underaged girls.
And, let's not forget Randy Ankeney, rising star in the Colorado GOP circles, who was arrested in 2001 for trying to have sex with a 13-year-old girl he met on Internet. The indictment revealed he warned the girl and her family he'd ruin them if they told anyone. Doesn't that sound familiar? After his arrest, another 17-year-old girl who worked on Ankeney's campaign came forward alleging he sexually assaulted her. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault of a child.
How about registered GOP hypocrite John Fund, late of the Wall Street Journal, a prominent anti-abortion columnist and fund raiser? He lost his position after it was revealed that he impregnated the daughter of an old girlfriend and then encouraged her to abort his child.
Besides Oxy-Contin addict and uncharged felon Rush, Florida GOP smear radio host Marty Glickman was arrested in 2001 for giving drugs and money to underage girls in exchange for sex. He kept his show spreading lies and denying the charges until he was convicted, taken off the air only because there was no studio in the Palm Beach County Jail.
The moral corruption on the GOP goes so deep that almost anywhere you scratch, the slime comes to the surface, even out of left field. Remember Mary Kay LeTourneau? You know, the teacher who had a compulsive series of affairs with her students and was the object of much tutt-tutting and outrage by the corporate media. Despite court orders prohibiting any further contact, she sacrificed her career, marriage, and her children to this sexually compulsive behavior. Well, her father, John G. Schmitz was an ultra-conservative Republican congressman forced into retirement by the discovery that he had an affair and children with one of his students. Imagine that! It has been alleged, but not proven (or, unsurprisingly, investigated) that Mrs. LeTourneau's her out-of-control sexuality came sexual abuse as a child.
Once again, to support moral values does not mean that we are all without sin. In otherwords, just because we are seek an ideal does not mean we aren't human and without sin.
To justify the lack of any moral standards because of past failures is to condemn the entirety of a nation to hell.
Dr. Thomas Woods at LewRockwell.com wrote an essay asking: "Do Conservatives Hate Their Own Founder?"
As is typical, good (or, I probably should say, relatively good) political-ideological terms are stolen and then assimilated into a pro-establishment mentality, i.e., statist and culturally to the left. After all, any truly anti-statist or relatively anti-statist (i.e., limited government) philosophy, and one that is socially and culturally conservative, could never become mainstream in an essentially statist and socially left establishment (and if it did, then the current federal and state governments would have to be looking extraordinarily different than they do today ------ ditto for the culture).
Imagine something like this being published in National Review.