What is a Conservative? Part II

So point #1 would be rendered thus: A conservative does not look to government for solutions and realizes that the scope of what government can accomplish is narrow and limited. Initiative for change, genuine accomplishment and economic growth must be cultivated from the grassroots up. Which brings us to....

2. A conservative realizes that the United States Constitution and time-tested constitutional processes must be preserved at all costs. This belief is at least as important as the sentiments that are iterated in my first point. It is also at the heart of the debate on judicial philosophy in our country, from apellate courts to the Supreme Court, the highest in the land.

Our Constitution has now endured for 221 years, a worldwide record in longevity. It is logical to conclude that this is a credit to the ingenuity of the Founding Fathers and their reliance on the innate abilities of the individual, as opposed to the elite.

An activist judiciary, avidly supported by a largely liberal media and their comrades in Congress, constantly seeks to enact sweeping change through fiat rather than due process. The Constitutional process circumvents this with its built-in mechanisms that favor a tedious legislative process, which ensures continual frustration for the leftist academics who know better than the rest of us the direction in which the country should go.

It is natural and absolutely necessary that a conservative side with the Constitution. In the instances where the Founding Fathers had it wrong and where America has failed for too long to get it right (slavery and segregation are two that come quickly to mind), the Constitutional amendment process has provided for an ultimately much less divisive outcome over the long term than unconstitutional legislation has proffered (think Roe v. Wade).

It goes without saying that a conservative should know the Constitution backwards and forwards, be able to cite which amendments are incorporated into the Bill of Rights without even thinking twice and be able to recite large portions, at least, from memory. I will go on record with the fact that I am way behind the curve here, but I plan to change that soon. In these times, we can afford no less than that level of familiarity.


3. A conservative will always affirm the rights of the individual to life, liberty and property. Not to get distracted here, but I know some will immediately inquire regarding the absence of "pursuit of happiness" in the above phrase. That guarantee is not found nor is it implicit in the Constitution. If you don't know where that particular phrase does originate, you aren't smarter than a 5th grader, so go let Jeff Foxworthy educate you for a spell! :) The rights to life, liberty and property, on the other hand, are repeatedly cited and confirmed.

The right to life is foundational to a just society. No two ways about it. There are difficult situations that emerge on an all-too-regular basis in a world filled with sinful people and imperfect circumstances where the right of one to life is pitted against the victimization of another. An example of the former would occur when a murderer or rapist goes on trial. In an entirely different scenario, a mother may have to make an agonizing decision about whether or not to carry a baby to term when her own health is at risk. These occur on an infrequent enough basis to compose a miniscule percentage of the dilemmas that they characterize.

Human life must be protected and a travesty is affected when a society moves in the opposite direction. This is my biggest sticking point with libertarians, whom I love 95% of the time. There seems to be, among most of them, no commitment to the protection of the right to life on the part of the weakest among us, the unborn. How do you propose, this being the case, to vouch for the right to life for the remaining segments of the population? If someone can help me here, please feel free to try. I can't grasp even the attempt at logic.