By Mark Baisley
Sunday, October 21, 2012
There happens in life those rare moments when you find
yourself on center stage; A monumental question has been posed and everyone
else in the room is listening, ready to capture that wedge of sage counsel from
your personal wisdom. If you are a
senior, and the audience is your grandchildren, the introspection that you
share could well affect their formative youth.
If you are the President of the United States, and the
audience is a group of earnest students at Moscow University of International
Relations, the opportunity is presented for delivering a marble-worthy quote
that could favorably advance the course of human history. I well remember this moment in 1998; the most
epic swing and a miss since mighty Casey struck out in Mudville.
President Bill Clinton was on a tour of Russia, just
seven years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russian President Boris Yeltsin was clumsily
attempting to restructure his country’s political and economic bearings under
the perestroika banner. The future
leaders of this grand nation had invited the leader of Western culture to give
them a handle to grasp the mysterious tool of free enterprise. President Clinton told them:
“First, in tough times governments need stable revenues
to pay their bills, support salaries, pensions, and health care. That requires decisive action to ensure that
everyone pays their fair share of taxes.
Otherwise, a few pay too much, many pay too little, the government is in
the hole and can never get out, and you will never be able to have a stable
economic policy. It is tempting for
everyone to avoid wanting to pay any taxes.
But if everyone will pay their fair share, the share will be modest and
their incomes will be larger over the long run because of the stability and growth
it will bring to this Russian economic system.”
To this day, citizens from all over Russia can visit the
countless statues and monuments where President Clinton’s quote is not on
display.
I recently found myself standing before a large, foreign
audience of sorts. A journalist from
L'Humanité, a newspaper controlled by the French Communist Party, requested an
interview from me on what it means to be an American conservative. He was touring the United States during our
presidential election season, gathering intelligence on our big campaign season
to share with his audience back home.
While I regret not sharing a more direct interaction, I
found it fortunate that reporter Christophe Deroubaix and I missed our attempt
to meet in person because it gave me the opportunity to more fully answer his
questions in my own words. While I am
merely the county-level Republican Party Chairman of a conservative community,
the last thing I wanted was to repeat the Bill Clinton bathos from 1998.
Christophe Deroubaix: “What does mean for you to be a
conservative?”
An American conservative is one who rests on the proven
truths and tested wisdom that are captured in our founding document, the Declaration
of Independence. Ideologically, we
attempt to conserve these founding principles in our communal
interactions. I can sum this up as:
1. Recognition that there is an omnipotent creator of the
Universe who is to be revered as the actual source of natural laws and of
inalienable rights for every human on earth.
All competing notions give too much power to one group of people over
the others.
2. Rugged individualism; An encouragement for every adult
to depend on their own efforts to provide for their family and themselves. Conservatives understand that citizens who
are self-reliant are the most free and the most happy.
3. Limited and distributed government; The Declaration of
Independence makes clear the primary purpose of government. Immediately after listing some inalienable
rights is the statement "That to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men." Conservatives
object to those who seek additional roles for government, especially when they
interfere with the natural laws of commerce.
The writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, wrote
in 1799, “I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all
the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national
debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make
partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the
principle of its being a public blessing.”
4. A strong defense; Conservatives believe that defending
the people of the United States from foreign attack is the primary purpose of
government. Coupled with this granted
power of ultimate force is a strong measure of accountability to the people
being defended. Therefore, the military
is to be run by a civilian
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_control_of_the_military).
5. Majority rule with minority rights through
representative government. Conservatives
believe that the majority opinion should prevail except in those cases when the
rights of those in the minority are being infringed. America is a republic; not a democracy. Conservatives also find it self-serving and
underhanded when the courts are used to force social change on the majority,
such as the redefinition of marriage.
6. Individual charity, balanced with a last-resort
government safety net. Conservatives
believe that the government should only take money from some to give to others
in one of three circumstances; inherent disability, the temporary condition of
poverty, and unforeseen natural disasters where insurance would not reasonably
be in place. In all other cases of
charity, Conservatives believe that government should tax as little as
necessary in order to allow prosperous people to give voluntarily to those whom
they see in need. For example, taking
care of an autistic adult would be an appropriate use of government funding,
where keeping an able-bodied adult on welfare for a long period of time creates
an unhealthy dependence.
Christophe Deroubaix: “What's your stand on the following
issues?”
. Taxes: Hayek is
clearly superior to Keynes. The purpose
of taxation should be to fund government.
It should not be used to redistribute wealth. Because taxation removes the fuel of money
from a natural economy, it should be kept at a rate that the economy will
easily tolerate, say 17% total. A
healthy economy that is not slowed by heavy taxation will generate an optimum
amount of funding for government operations.
. Obamacare:
Health care is not an exception to the rules of natural law. We receive the finest care when the laws of
supply and demand are allowed to function in the private industry of doctors,
hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and insurance.
Problems occur when uninsured people need care beyond their means to
pay. Obamacare attempts to resolve this
through forced involvement in the government program. A better solution would be to ensure by law
that every individual (or their parents) is responsible to fund his own health
care.
. Abortion: As we
are endowed by our Creator with the right to life, no one who is less than God
is in a position to determine when that right begins. No conservative wishes to coerce a woman to
give birth against her will. But we have
yet to figure out how to ensure the life of the unborn person without asking
the pregnant person to give birth. As it
is the government’s role to ensure the peoples’ rights (not to grant them), the
abortion of unborn humans should be discontinued as a relic of uncivilized
expedience.
. Guns: Conservatives revere their right to protect
themselves, their family, and their property with ultimate force for two
reasons, for which I give you these quotes; "To ban guns because criminals
use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and
liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and
the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and
liberties as the lawless will allow.” - Jeff Snyder, New York gun rights
advocate. "The strongest reason for
the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to
protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson,
third President of the United States.
. Gay marriage:
Marriage is a religious institution created by God long before
governments existed. When clergy
pronounces two people to be married, that union is accepted and supported by
the voluntary members of that church.
When the state redefines marriage, its citizens are forced to accept
those unions in spite of their religious convictions. While most conservatives believe that
traditional marriage should be maintained by law, I personally do not believe
that it is the proper role of government to license this religious institution.
. Death penalty:
Some bastards deserve to be put to death.
. Climate change:
First of all, conservatives appreciate a healthy environment and enjoy
air, water and land that is not polluted by selfish practices. Sensible laws against pollution are
appropriate. But the phenomenon of
climate change should be a scientific study not befouled by political
ideology. Evidently, the earth has
experienced many periods of varying climates.
If human activity is causing an undesirable change in the climate, let’s
seek to understand it. But we should
frustrate all efforts by the control freaks of government to diminish
industry. The altruistic calls for
environmental protections are merely a well-branded campaign by statists to
justify their pious attack on free enterprise.
. Religion: The
First Amendment to the United States Constitution is the primary of our Bill of
Rights, and begins with the wording, “Congress shall make no law respecting the
establishment of religion, nor the free exercise thereof…” In the American structure, with an overt
recognition of a Creator God, a culture of religious pluralism can well
exist. While non-believing citizens may
be exposed to official government recognition of the existence of God, no
citizen need be compelled by government agencies to adopt any particular belief
about the Creator. It is imperative,
however, that those who fulfill the Constitution in elected office religiously
maintain an unyielding regard for the Founding Father’s god. The notion in the Declaration of Independence
that humanity’s Creator would have also endowed all of them equally with
unalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is well within the
character of the Biblical God. For mere
consistency of logic, the Creator who is recognized by the authors of the
Declaration of Independence either is the Biblical God or another supernatural
being who is similar to the Biblical God.
The Founder’s Creator cannot, by reason, be Neptune, Allah, The Hindu
Rain God, Mother Earth nor non-existent.
Yet how does the American apologist reconcile the First Amendment to the
Constitution with an official government recognition of a narrow definition of
God? To define a god who is simply what
we want him to be is to avoid discovering the truth about him. Worse, a god who is limited by human capacity
to conceive him is a weakened god, unworthy of instituting principles, and
certainly not sufficient for basing the establishment of an entire nation. The Biblical God said of himself, “I am that
I am” (Exodus 3:14). America’s founders
responded with, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
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