Conservative--a Really Dirty Word

I have always considered myself to be “conservative”. Not “a conservative”, but simply “conservative”. If a system or an item has worked well for a long time, it is still in good repair, it puts no one at risk due to new circumstances—then let us think long and hard before replacing it merely for the sake of replacing it.
My davenport, for instance was purchased in 1956. It is in excellent condition—it would be hard to find one made as well today. (Doing so would cost thousands.) Why on earth would I buy a new one? I view my politics the same way.
But I loathe and detest what the word has come to mean politically. It seems to have become a synonym for all that is uncaring, greedy and without ruth. The party of the Progressives and Teddy Roosevelt that recommended Social Security and regulation of a raft of industries seems to have vanished.
In the arena of economics, the term has stopped making any sense at all. I recall in 1980, when they were vying for the presidential nomination, George Bush senior called Reagan’s economic plans “voodoo economics”. In the past year, we’ve seen just how much voodoo was involved.
Let’s make no mistake about it—the economic crises of today were caused by people we’ve come to call “conservatives” run amuck. Deregulation, “Greed is good” ethics in business and finance, and a reckless disregard for basic financial principles have brought the house down—not “tax and spend” Democrats..
(One cannot imagine Nineteenth Century Republican business moguls like J.P.Morgan and John D. Rockefeller acting with such reckless disregard for the national welfare or fiscal soundness. The old “Robber Barons” look like models of probity compared to the “conservatives” of today.)
This week’s “Newsweek” quotes an English writer—who lived in and covered American for a quarter of a century—on his impression of the modern American “conservative”. The man, Henry Fairlie, nicely distinguishes between the English Conservative (a Tory) and the American Republican Conservative.
As an English conservative he saw the “government’s role [as being] to preserve tradition and social order , not to speed the accumulation of great power and wealth among the elites… .” “The [American] conservative,” he wrote, “can all too easily drift into a morally bankrupt and intellectually shallow defense of those who have it made and those who are on the make.”
(This article in the June 29th issue, on page 49-51, is well worth the cost of the magazine. I would urge every Republican—and as many Democrats as might like to—to get it and read it.)
In an article for the “Washington Post” during the 1980 Republican Convention—the year of Reagan and the Moral Majority—Fairlie excoriates the conservative Republican delegates he sees. “Narrow minded, book banning, truth censoring, mean spirited; ungenerous, envious, intolerant, afraid; chicken, bullying, trivially moral, falsely patriotic, flag cheapening, God cheapening; the common man, shallow, small, sanctimonious.”
One can imagine the Biblical St. Paul writing that about people whose morality he questioned. And it was written by an English conservative who came to America in the 1960s expecting to meet kindred spirits among American conservatives.
It didn’t happen. American conservatives simply are not conservative in any true sense of the word. They are out to conserve nothing. They seem only interested in amassing. They seem willing to throw any part of the past and tradition out in order to advance that one goal.
They call it “conservatism” when they oppose any measure whatsoever that might put limits on their acquisitiveness. To them it is “conservatism” to oppose any measure that might benefit the indigent, injured or uninsured. A “conservative” is an unrestrained Darwinian who claims to relish the life of fang and claw—so long as no one is permitted bite and scratch back.
That’s not conservative. That conserves nothing—not the good, not the useful, not the time tested. It drapes itself in a spurious patriotism, bellowing loudly that the flag is dishonored if they are in any way restrained from exercising their own greed.
By bellowing their defense of Godliness so loudly that no one can think clearly, they contrive to obscure the fact that their own actions make the Christian Faith a hissing and a by-word among the population at large. I find it infuriating that the moment I identify myself as a conservative Christian, I am immediately tarred with the brush of indifference and lack of charity.
The Christian Spirit that created the Salvation Army and the downtown missions, that followed Livingstone into Africa to stop the slave trade is subsumed in a culture of prodigious consumption and sublime indifference to those who lack the merest necessities. THAT is by no means true conservatism.
But it’s the spirit that elected Reagan, forced the elder Bush and Clinton to the right and finally brought down the man who may be the last Reaganite, Bush the younger.
I remain conservative. I call myself by that name proudly. I thank Mr. Fairlie, with his English perspective for articulating thoughts and concerns that have floated around inside my mind for the past thirty years. It sounds silly to call myself a Tory—but I’m closer to that than I am a Reagan Republican. (I once considered myself an “Eisenhower Republican”—remember those?)
So, if I am this upset with what has become of my Republican Party—why haven’t I followed Arlon Specter’s example (he’s another old fashioned Eisenhower Republican) and become a Democrat?
I’ll deal with that question tomorrow.